EDIT: also, we'll modify the docs to make that more clear (see https://github.com/rethinkdb/docs/issues/1076)
In [6]: r.connect(host="localhost", port=28015, password="", ssl={"ca_certs": "./cert.pem"}).repl() Out[6]: <rethinkdb.net.DefaultConnection at 0x7f92ea759fd0>
EDIT: also, we'll modify the docs to make that more clear (see https://github.com/rethinkdb/docs/issues/1076)