michael_nielsen

And yet, my experience with pop physics is that the more abstract, technical, and speculative stuff does WAY better. (3/n)

The long post leading up to no-cloning has about 6X the pageviews as the shorter one with concrete examples. (5/n)

And, y'know, there's a lot more meat to the no-cloning post than to the tech one (which is a little rant-y), but the pattern holds. (6/n)

Posts about arcane points of quantum physics consistently draw several times the traffic of posts with a traditional "hook." (7/n)

For that matter, my first book, on quantum mechanics, has sold a large multiple of my third book on everyday science. (8/n)

And within pop-physics more generally, speculative books about string theory and the like vastly outsell more grounded topics. (9/n)

(This is a perennial source of annoyance for those of us who work in fields far removed from string theory...) (10/n)