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Re:I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational compl... by andbberger on Friday June 29, 2018 @02:10PM (#17426360)
Sure it makes sense - a qubit is canonically a quantum spin system, which has two eigenstates, up and down.
Re:I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational compl... by JakeTyo on Friday June 29, 2018 @02:14PM (#17426393)
What about superposition? Or is that not considered a 'state'?
Re:I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational compl... by OscarCunningham on Friday June 29, 2018 @02:29PM (#17426525)
They're states but not eigenstates. It's like the difference between RGB colour and greyscale. In both cases there are infinitely many possible colours, but in greyscale they're all mixtures of two "primary" colours (black and white) whereas in RGB they're mixture of four (black, red, green and blue).

In a qubit the infinitely many superposition states are all mixtures of just two eigenstates.

Re:I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational compl... by JakeTyo on Friday June 29, 2018 @03:45PM (#17427234)
Thank you! This makes perfect sense.
Re:I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational compl... by virgil_disgr4ce on Friday June 29, 2018 @02:29PM (#17426526)
A superposition is indeed a state, comprised of linear combinations of the basis states.

Further, (and anyone, please correct me where I'm wrong), the eigenfunctions (which could actually be called eigenstates) of an operator ARE the basis set, as they are orthonormal. (Right?)

Re:I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational compl... by Koshkin on Friday June 29, 2018 @02:24PM (#17426488)
One can justify the name using the fact that the state space is 2-dimensional.