What is a quantum logical qubit and why is it more stable than physical qubits?

[Scarlett_T]

I just read about the new study on quantum error correction and I'm trying to wrap my head around the logic. They're saying a logical qubit built from several physical ones can actually be more stable, which seems completely backwards to my intuition about compounding errors.

[Justin.G]

I read the study and my gut reaction was this seems backwards but they encode the info across many physical qubits so a few flips do not destroy the state and then a correction step in the field of quantum error correction fixes what went wrong

[Zoey.D]

One thing that sticks is they look for error patterns while watching many parts at once which means a single bad reading can be ignored if the rest line up

[JoshuaXG]

Do you think the real issue is how we read the results rather than the qubits themselves?

[Donald.H]

I tried a tiny version with five qubits and it felt fragile in practice the drift kept creeping in and I stopped testing