State

A state is the description that tells you the chances of the measurements you might make, and for one qubit in a pure state that description is the pair of amplitudes. Two columns of numbers that differ only by an overall factor, the same minus in front of both, are the same state for every experiment you can run.

The word does not mean a place on the chip where the qubit is sitting. Keith once pointed at the dot on the globe as if it were a marble in a bowl, and the dot is a drawing of the amplitudes, not a location in the metal.