[consilient]

> Given that a monad is an interface for sequential computation, a much better name would be something like "Seq", "SeqComp", or something like that.

Just because you can look at something as describing a computation doesn't mean you always should. For example:

    data BinaryTree x = 
        | Leaf x
        | Node (BinaryTree x) (BinaryTree x)

    instance Monad BinaryTree where

        return :: a -> BinaryTree a
        return x = Leaf x

        bind :: (a -> BinaryTree b) -> BinaryTree a -> BinaryTree b
        bind f (Leaf x) = f x // replace a leaf with the result of calling f on its label
        bind f (Node l r) = Node (bind f l) (bind f r) // traverse down the tree, ultimately replacing all the leaf nodes with a new subtree

You can choose to interpret a binary tree as describing nondeterministic computation where you have two choices at every step, but I rarely do. Most of the time trees are just trees.

[hgsgm]

The tree is a tree, but the Monad instance is sequencing modifications to the tree.

[consilient]

Sure, Kleisli arrows `a -> m b` are generally best interpreted in a computational sense. But with something like `IO`, the actual objects `m b` are computations as well, and this intuition is not as broadly applicable.