Quantum mechanics without mysteries
-----------------------------------

Quantum physics tends to generate a sense of mystery, 
-- perhaps for historical reasons, 
-- perhaps to generate the interest of laymen in physics (''quantum 
   teleportation'' simply sounds much more impressive than ''copying 
   the state of a photon''),
-- perhaps because emphasis is put on thought experiments rather 
   than real experiments, 
-- perhaps because it is too often poorly explained, 

But there is nothing mysterious about quantum mechanics if it is 
understood in the way it is actually practiced -- rather than in 
the way it is customarily talked about.

A very unmysterious derivation of the Born rule is given in Section 7.5
of 
    A. Neumaier and D. Westra, 
    Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras. 
     arXiv:0810.1019 
Chapter 7 discusses the interpretation of quantum physics in terms of 
models and observables. The Bayesian (information-based) view of 
probabilities and its limitations is presented in Sections 7.6 and 7.7.

See also Sections 3-5 of
   A. Neumaier, 
   Optical models for quantum mechanics,
   Slides of a lecture given on February 16, 2010 at the
   Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Giessen,