This is what I'm trying to combat, though! The math is not over your head. maximum, If you know high school math, then literally all one needs to start studying

This is what I'm trying to combat, though! The math is not over your head. maximum, If you know high school math, then literally all one needs to start studying quantum computation is linear algebra --- you can study in a semester, as it is one of the first courses all engineering graduates learn, and is luckily quite intuitive. MIT OCW has Gilbert Strang's video lectures freely available (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video-lectures/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra...), along with exercises and transcripts. That's the beauty of quantum computation; it harnesses all the intuitions we already have about computation, skips the messy parts of solving stuff in quantum mechanics while still keeping all the fiddly interesting bits that makes quantum quantum. I really do believe that learning quantum computation is the "correct way" (for some folks) to gain an intuition for quantum mechanics