I discuss a set of strong, but probabilistically intelligible, axioms from which one can almost derive the appratus of finite dimensional quantum theory. Stated informally, these require that systems appear completely classical as restricted to a single measurement, that different measurements, and likewise different pure states, be equivalent (up to the action of a compact group of symmetries), and that every state be the marginal of a bipartite non-signaling state perfectly correlating two measurements.This much yields a mathematical representation of measurements and states that is already very suggestive of quantum mechanics. In particular, in any theory satisfying these axioms, measurements can be represented by orthonormal subsets of, and states, by vectors in, an ordered real Hilbert space -in the quantum case, the space of Hermitian operators, with its usual tracial inner product. One final postulate (a simple minimization principle, still in need of a clear interpretation) forces the positive cone of this space to be homogeneous and self-dual and hence, to be the the state space of a formally real Jordan algebra. From here, the route to the standard framework of finite-dimensional quantum mechanics is quite short. 1 allowing here real or quaternionic cases as "quantum" 2 In fact, there is a fairly direct route from Jordan algebras to complex Quantum Mechanics, at least in finite dimensions. A theorem of Hanche-Olsen [14] shows that the only Jordan algebras having a Jordanalgebraic tensor product with M2(C) -that is, with a qbit -are the Jordan parts of C * -algebras. Since the structure of qbits can be reasonably well-motivated on directly operational grounds, the only irreducible systems in a Jordan-algebraic theory supporting a reasonable tensor product, will be full matrix algebras. The condition that bipartite states be uniquely determined by the joint probabilities they assign to the two component systems -a condition sometimes called local tomography -then dictates that the scalar field be C [2,16,7].