I never said otherwise. I said it was misleading syntax sugar because it implies that static functions defined in any namespace (extension methods) are the sam

I never said otherwise. I said it was misleading syntax sugar because it implies that static functions defined in any namespace (extension methods) are the same as methods - which have access to internal members and are defined within class hierarchy. If you know something is an extension method then you know it's just syntax sugar, but you can't determine that just by looking at the code.