[erlang-questions] Message Receive Semantics (was eep: Multiple Patterns)

[Steve]

At the risk of sounding like a "dumb noob" (which is, actually, pretty
much what I am)...

...can anyone clarify for me why you would wish to retain messages in
the process mailbox that the process didn't wish to receive or act
upon?

It struck me from the get-go when learning about Erlang that I could
not think of a use case for this mode of operation, and it always
seemed to me to be a touch dangerous (and a good way to break an
unsuspecting application).

Yes - I'm asking why the erlang messaging works the way it does.

/Steve