I’m sorry if this seems dumb. I tend to take things literally and “mutual” and “exclusive” seem to be antonyms but mutually exclusive is a term used a lot and it confuses the crap out of me. I’m a native English speaker also.
Does it mean that the two things CAN exist together? I feel like my brain does gymnastics trying to understand the term; I’m not a dumb person but this term just totally eludes me!
Please don’t attack me, just trying to not feel stupid.
In: 49
In plain english, “exclusive” is sort of vague, and not absolute. If an event is ‘exclusive’ it just means “hard to get into to” not “they literally exclude everyone”.
Mutual means “held in common by two or more parties.”
Mutual exclusion is when the exclusion is more severe, but limited to the set of things we’re talking about.
If two things are mutually exclusive, they exclude each other, but not necesarrily exclude other things.
e.g.
So if two events are “mutually exclusive”for you, then it might mean you can’t attend both (perhaps they are scheduled for exactly the same time and are far way from each other, or you can only afford 1 ticket.
However, neither event is particularly ‘exclusive’ in general.
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Also, I think ‘mutually exclusive’ is as a phrase tends to be a more mathematical/logical/absolute statement.
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