Comment by tacitusarc 4 hours ago
As this is a semantic debate over the definition of delivery, I asked my very non-technical wife if she thought in the scenario you described, the package was delivered exactly once. She said obviously not, and this discussion is very stupid, and I should stop participating in it. So there’s that.
I don't think the example was perfect which explains your wife's reaction.
Think of it more like the first delivery guy/girl left his/her car outside and wrote 123 on it. Then walked back.
The next one sees the car with a sign saying 123 and won't even ring the door bell or leave a package. Now you haven't gotten the package twice, it has not been delivered twice.
Sure you can complain that there's a car outside your home but in digital system you won't even see it. It would also cost the deliver firm a car for every package but that is not your problem and again, in the digital world the cost is a lot less than a car.
There is an argument that the street would be filled up with delivery vans ans there would be no more room for new deliveries to you or your neighbors but that is a limitation you could talk about. You probably can't handle an infinite number of packages delivered at the same time either and you won't wait an infinite amount of time for any specific package.
Try this version with your wife.
Smart wife. My take on the whole thing is that it's not wise to reason from non-technical metaphors around packages or lawn mowing when the reality is electronic systems. I don't know if it's any wiser but what I like to do is work my way up from the basics. What does delivery mean? Start with two wires, one for signal and one for common ground. (Or just one wire, and pretend you can use earth-return reliably.) If that isn't enough to resolve what terms should mean, consider them with differential signaling. If that still isn't enough to get it, consider them with relay nodes. If at some point "delivery" has changed definitions to suddenly forbid something that previously wasn't forbidden, maybe you've made a mistake.