Why are Python's 'private' methods not actually private?

Question

Python gives us the ability to create \'private\' methods and variables within a class by prepending double underscores to the name, like this: __myPrivateMethod()

Answer 1

The class.__stuff naming convention lets the programmer know he isn't meant to access __stuff from outside. The name mangling makes it unlikely anyone will do it by accident.

True, you still can work around this, it's even easier than in other languages (which BTW also let you do this), but no Python programmer would do this if he cares about encapsulation.