A logical encoding results in higher-fidelity quantum circuit elements compared to physical qubit implementations. If physical operations have an error rate that is too high, encoding data and operations will further increase that error rate. In contrast, when your physical operations have an error rate that is below threshold quantum error correction (QEC) has the potential to actually reduce the error rates, as intended. The “break-even” point is the physical error rate below which QEC helps, and above which QEC hurts. Different quantum error correction codes, operations and circuit families will have different “break-even” points.