Eli5: what is a superposition?
In: 2
u/Caucasiafro is referring to the [superposition principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposition_principle), which is a property of a lot of systems that you can calculate the effect of multiple stimuli by adding up what their individual effects would have been.
u/Dane_Bramage is referring to [quantum superposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition). It has some mathematical similarities to the principle above, but as Dane’s comment says, a quantum superposition itself is a statement about the current existence of a particle, not to a stimulus/response process. There is a superposition principle for these quantum states (the way the whole system responds in certain interactions can be seen as the sum of individual responses for the different states it is in), which is why the name was carried over from one to the other.
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