Hello Frederick, Thursday, February 1, 2007, 6:11:32 PM, you wrote:

And we have reached the monadic equivalent of Schrodinger's cat.

yes, it's exact reason why we love monads - the appropriate fruits in container are appeared depending on environment where it's used. you send probabilistic container to the friend, she should just say "i believe that it contains apples" before opening it

...

In the recent HWN, I noticed a new monad metaphor by Don Stewart: Think of a monad as a spacesuite full of nuclear waste in the ocean next to a container of apples. now, you can't put oranges in the space suite or the nucelar waste falls in the ocean, *but* the apples are carried around anyway, and you just take what you need

This metaphor very clearly captures the essence of monads. Perhaps it will be even more helpful if accompanied by a small illustration: http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2007/01/think-of-monad.html

I hope this turns out to be useful to somebody,

-- Eric Kow http://www.loria.fr/~kow PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9 Merci de corriger mon francais.

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