my thoughts on the "is water wet" debate:
it's more accurate to say that water is a liquid.
wetness is a temporary condition, not an inherent property of a substance. it is an interaction, an effect.
when you say your clothes are wet, you are conveying a bunch of mini information — your clothes became soaked somehow; you spilled something on yourself, it's raining, etc; now you need your clothes to get dry — and there is an implication that your clothes have a state of dryness that's more usual than it being wet
this whole debate is very interesting to me, i don't want to dismiss it to one single answer, i want to explore a bunch of different questions and answers and linguistic semantics, like
if water is wet, then may we infer that water can be dry?
does it really count if water molecules are making each other wet? not really, there's a difference between adhesion and cohesion. so what about water and a different liquid?
what about things that aren't liquid and solids neatly, like slime, oil, etc? how far can we really get close to the boundaries of things and create new situations and exceptions while also trying to find a simple explanation to sum up all of this?
what about water on ice? there, water in a solid state, being made wet by liquid water. is water vapour wet when it's very humid and you can feel the drops? vs very very very dry water vapour?
why do people like saying "water is wet"? i don't think they're misinformed or stupid in many cases, i think in this case, it becomes more about practical shorthands vs scientific misinformation. we all say "the sky is blue", "did the sun rise from the east today", etc etc, even though scientifically, those aren't true. there's usually an implication of an addendum, "*relative to our human perspective", cause yeah, none of us really see the earth revolving around the sun or see water molecules interaction at a microscopic levels daily. but it's also the point of what the speaker is trying to communicate; their message isn't "hey, this outdated fact is true", their message is "that's obvious" and using a metaphorical language to convey that, usually as a part of a larger discussion. that's why it becomes pedantic to be fixated on that one part of their linguistic choices if the central point is you're trying to discuss over something, and you understand the main point they're making; forests vs trees!
to me personally, it will always feel wrong when people say water is wet and i cannot but resist the urge to debate that, but again, like, it's both useless in that particular conversation — i have accepted "the sun rises" even though i know the geocentric model is not true; i find "the sun rises" related sentiments in literature beautiful, in fact, and i think there can be an interesting metaphor with "is water wet", something something, "you take care of everyone, but who takes care of you?", maybe? — but it's significant in the greater grand scheme of things, like i want scientists and linguists and writers and psychologists and normal people alike to debate more over this just so we can get some interesting perspective on the idea of wetness in a scientific definition, solid vs liquids, permanent properties vs temporary conditions, linguistic shorthands, is it pedantic to correct misinformation even if it's a normalised adage for ages of human history, communication vs language, and so on.
multiple things can be true while some are closer if not exactly objective facts
and yes i struggle with adhd
