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
One way to think of it … “exclusive” implies the action, “mutually” implies the direction. So, rock/paper/scissors … each one excludes another (rock beats scissors), but it’s not mutual (scissors does not beat rock). So RPS would be “one-way exclusive.”
Tic-tac-toe would be a game where “moves” are *mutually* exclusive: once a space is marked X, it cannot later in the game become an O, and once it’s marked O it cannot become an X.
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