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mayo rule (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Water is watery, but not wet. Milk isn't soaked in milk, it just IS milk

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    what makes something wet? being in contact with water (water molecules touching). take some wet paper, there are paper molecules touching* water molecules, so it's wet. replace the paper molecules with other water molecules. why should it not carry that the new water molecules are also wet? they are in the exact same situation which the paper was. perhaps an argument can be made that one water molecule alone is not wet, but many are.

    * molecules can't truly touch, but they interact through intermolecular forces, which is close enough

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I wouldn't really consider the water to be touching itself, it just IS itself. If you replaced the paper with water, it would just be all water.

    You could dry out the paper by getting all the water molecules out of it, but how do you dry out water?

    I guess this is really more of a semantics issue lol

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    you cant dry out water.... because it is wet.

    if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, its probably a duck. and water feels wet.

    if water is considered not wet because it only makes other things wet, then why is wet paper considered wet, since, by the same logic, it only makes other things wet.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The paper is the other thing. I don't understand the question.

    'Wet' is a concept ancestor people came up with to describe how their towels were sometimes squishy and sometimes weren't. I don't think they knew what molecules were.

    Knowing that your clothes are soaked in water is useful, but knowing that a river is soaked in... river, isn't. So, that part of the definition just doesn't develop.

    But also, like you're saying, 'wet' is a feeling. Dipping your hand in a pot or squeezing a sponge feel similarly, so... aren't they both wet?

    So, which is it? Wet or not?

    Whatever is socially expedient, I really don't care. Water feels wet is good enough for me.

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