On Tue, 05 Sep 2017 21:17:30 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote: > Sure you can say with Steven that this can be 'explained' by saying an > object can be in two places at one time. > Others would then say 'Humpty-dumpty!' since you have removed the most > basic intuition of objects and you are in effect saying that a python > object means what you ordain it means without further ado/explanation
I have previously agreed that the "multiple places at once" metaphor is not to everyone's liking. But many (perhaps even most) people have no problem dealing with location as a metaphor, where being in two places (metaphorically) is no problem at all: - I am in love, in trouble and in denial all at once. Even when the location is not a state of being but an actual physical place, we can be in multiple places at once: - I am in my home, in Melbourne, and in Australia all at once. Being in two places at once is a common trope in both fantasy and science fiction (often involving time travel). These are not niche genres: they are *extremely* popular. One of the Harry Potter movies involved Harry, Ron and Hermoine travelling backwards in time a few minutes to watch themselves. It's a moderately common trope in stories like Doctor Who, where the Doctor frequently interacts with his past (or future) self. I recently saw an episode of Dark Matter that used the trope. Robert Heinlein, one of the greats of SF, wrote a number of classic time travel stories involving people being in multiple places at once. (In one of them, the protagonist has a sex change and becomes *both* his own grandfather and grandmother.) An object being inside itself is rarer, but its been done at least twice that I know of in Doctor Who. Don't underestimate people's ability to stretch the location metaphor beyond actual physical location. We do it all the time for virtual locations like IRC channels: - I'm in #python, #ruby and #javascript all at once. But if the metaphor isn't for you, I'm not saying you have to use it. -- Steven D'Aprano “You are deluded if you think software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can write virtualization layers without security holes.” —Theo de Raadt -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
