i don't understand what you think is nuts about this. it's an interpreted language and the word `self` is not special in any way (it's just convention - you can call the first param to a method anything you want). so there's no way for the interpreter/compiler/runtime to know you're accessing a field of the class itself (let alone that that field isn't a computed property or something like that).
lots of hottakes that people have (like this one) are rooted in just a fundamental misunderstanding of the language and programming languages in general <shrugs>.
The name `self` is a convention, yes, but interestingly in python methods the first parameter is special beyond the standard "bound method" stuff. See for example PEP 367 (New Super) for how `super()` resolution works (TL;DR the super function is a special builtin that generates extra code referencing the first parameter and the lexically defining class)