I'm a former maintainer of RxJava so my answer might have a Java tint to it. I would describe Observable as representing an uninitiated computation. More analo

I'm a former maintainer of RxJava so my answer might have a Java tint to it. I would describe Observable as representing an uninitiated computation. More analogous to function reference than an Object with state. If you delve deep into an observable implementation you'll likely find that the only concrete property is the function to invoke on subscription. As an exercise replace "Observable" with "function" in each of your questions and see if they still make sense.