David Z Albert

The most exasperating book I have ever tried to read. Forget that the math is beyond me; I could skim through that if the writer had even the remotest idea about how to construct a clear English sentence. (A previous review has a dead-on imitation of the type of paragraph you find over and over here.) Contrary to the book flap which hilariously states, "...as well as a novel attempt at writing about science in a style that is simultaneously elementary and deep," this book is almost gibberish show more in its incessant use of parentheticals, interjected remarks, and endless footnotes at the bottom of each page that often continue to the next page. If Albert speaks this way when he teaches, I'm surprised he isn't bruised from having things thrown at him. show less

Being a follow-up to one of the author's previous books, this work on the philosophy of QM is not really self-contained. Fairly early on, I lost motivation for attempting to read it carefully. Albert's writing style has many exasperating quirks such as odd uses of parenthetical insertions, gross overuse of italicization, and repetition _ad nauseam_ of phrases like "tables and chairs and haircuts and universities". Even some of the (reasonably sparingly used) mathematical notation seemed to show more me to be nonstandard. Things like diagrams and lengthy multipage footnotes basically make the work impossible to read when it is in ebook form. I'd also say the choice of issues addressed is questionable. E.g., there is no mention of psi-epistemic QM interpretations and, instead of using "ontic versus epistemic" as the basis for discussing the nature of wavefunctions, he uses "ontic versus nomic". show less

This book is a great introduction to the mathematics of quantum mechanics. It has a good analysis of several different interpretations of the mechanics, and is written in a pretty colloquial style.

Or, to put it the way it would have been in the book...

This book (Quantum Mechanics and Experience) is a great introduction to the mathematics (the whole system, as it were) of quantum mechanics. It (the book, written by David Albert) has a good (as far as it goes) analysis of several different show more (possibly not empirically different in practice, by largely empirically differentiable in principle) interpretations of the mechanics (the quantum mechanical formalism, that is), and is written in a pretty colloquial style (which is to say, using terms like "color" or "hardness" instead of spin in order to reach a larger audience in a more intuitive way). show less

quantum philosophy. lots of it makes sense.