Schroedinger thought the wave function ought to be real:pic.twitter.com/3w7h0uG5Mv
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I like Scott Aaronson's reasoning on complex numbers in QM: it's a continuity assumption, where if you're applying an operation for one second then it also makes sense applying it for half a second. Complex numbers achieve this through algebraic closure! https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html …
It's not a good argument - every operation in SO(n) does have a square root.
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What is SO(n)? Scott talks about how complex numbers ensure every linear transformation has a square root in the same number of dimensions, is that the important part?
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The space of real orthogonal matrices with unit determinant. Perfectly good space to work in, with square roots, and could easily have been the type of space used for quantum computing (or, with some generalization, quantum mechanics).
End of conversation
New conversation -
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More important than the square is the representation.pic.twitter.com/gDhjquEIUb
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