Datasets:

---

innovation-hacking2

/

shitposting_dataset3

like 0

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\"." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\"." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness.", ">\n\nThanks Stupid Science,\nSo if I piss on you now, you wouldn't feel it?" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness.", ">\n\nThanks Stupid Science,\nSo if I piss on you now, you wouldn't feel it?", ">\n\nWe feel the warmth caused by the pee" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness.", ">\n\nThanks Stupid Science,\nSo if I piss on you now, you wouldn't feel it?", ">\n\nWe feel the warmth caused by the pee", ">\n\nWhen I take mushrooms I always think that everything I touch is wet" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness.", ">\n\nThanks Stupid Science,\nSo if I piss on you now, you wouldn't feel it?", ">\n\nWe feel the warmth caused by the pee", ">\n\nWhen I take mushrooms I always think that everything I touch is wet", ">\n\nEh, it doesn't seem that interesting to me. Maybe just being nit-picky, but most of the human experience is inferred from our aggregate sensations including memory and identity." ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness.", ">\n\nThanks Stupid Science,\nSo if I piss on you now, you wouldn't feel it?", ">\n\nWe feel the warmth caused by the pee", ">\n\nWhen I take mushrooms I always think that everything I touch is wet", ">\n\nEh, it doesn't seem that interesting to me. Maybe just being nit-picky, but most of the human experience is inferred from our aggregate sensations including memory and identity.", ">\n\nThe same with anything else also:\nWe don't feel cold. We just feel the absence of energy\nWe don't hear sounds, the brain interprets soundwaves as sounds\nEtc etc" ]

[ "This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.\nRemember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not \"thoughts had in the shower!\"\n(For an explanation of what a \"showerthought\" is, please read this page.)\nRule-breaking posts may result in bans.", ">\n\nMoisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.", ">\n\nMer-man", ">\n\nI think I got the black lung, Pop!", ">", ">\n\nFor Christ sake Derek you were down there a day!", ">\n\n\"God?\" \"God? What the shit are you talking about? It's me maury!\"", ">\n\nIt’s the “what the shit?!” for me…gets me every time 😂", ">\n\nMe too. Hilarious", ">\n\nIf you've ever touched running water with nitrile gloves on, you'll know it's trippy, your brain says your hand should be wet but it's completely dry, solely because the temperature change and texture is there", ">\n\nI hate the feeling of cold water on my hands so I use dish gloves when washing dishes. We didn’t have any one time and I used nitrile gloves instead - they were useless", ">\n\nDo you wash dishes with cold water?", ">\n\nI will rinse with cold water if im not using the dishwasher for some reason, do you not rinse off the soapy water?", ">\n\nRinse, okay. Personally, I still use hot or at least warm rather than cold to rinse. But I wouldn't wash my dishes with cold water", ">\n\nYes definitely wash with water as hot as I can bare but for some reason I've always rinsed with the normal temp water and never thought to do otherwise.", ">\n\nProbably to minimize scalding your hands while rinsing lol", ">\n\nI swear to God, a kid asked a question like this (how does the brain feel wetness) in freshman science class, after the teacher literally dared us to ask him anything to try and stump him, and the teacher totally shamed him for asking a stupid question \"because you just feel it.\"", ">\n\nWe were learning about properties in science. This teacher had a coffee cup and was talking about how the air around it was a gas, the cup was a solid and the coffee was a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. Then, he flipped over his cup, and dumped his coffee out and said see!\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat. I asked him why on a hot day you can see the waves of heat coming off the pavement. He just stared at me for like a minute. And then completely ignored the question and moved on. \nHe also moved his tongue all over his teeth while his mouth was closed a lot. I think he was on something.", ">\n\n\nThis same teacher was saying how you can't see heat.\n\nWell, actually you can't. You can see the effects, e.g. air refracting light due to heat.", ">\n\nFire?", ">\n\nThat's not the heat you are seeing, it's smoke particles releasing photons due to heat. Might be a small difference, but it is one. Try telling the ovens temp by just looking at the air inside (not the heating element)", ">\n\nWhat about a red hot iron bar? You can absolutely tell the difference between a cold, hot, and very hot one.\nAbsorbing Released photons is quite literally what seeing is, it's just semantics and quite unfair to say you don't see heat because you actually see the photons. It would be like saying you don't actually see anything, just the photons that bounce off said things", ">\n\nIron is the same. Wether you can see photons from heat depends entirely on the medium. If seeing an iron bar glowing is seeing heat, then seeing steam is seeing heat and feeling a cold slippery texture is feeling wetness. You are seeing what the heat causes, not the temperature itself.", ">\n\nBullshit. My mum knows if it’s damp or just cold every damn time. It’s one of her superpowers.", ">\n\nNah it's part of getting old with experience. Obviously something lying out for a long period of time isn't going to be wet even though it feels wet. Also just looking at it helps. Wet cloth moves differently than dry cloth.\nOr maybe I have super powers as well!", ">\n\nExperience is a superpower compared to the inexperienced", ">\n\nJust like how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", ">\n\nI can attest that your mother felt wetness last night, Trebeck.", ">\n\nI'm sorry the correct response is \"What is Idaho?\"", ">\n\nNo Trebek that would be your mother", ">\n\nSo that’s why my auntie thought she peed her pants when she first experienced seat warmers in my dad’s car.", ">\n\nI once spilled cold water on myself in the car without noticing, and I thought the nerves in my legs were just freaking out and tingling a little bit (because of the temperature), was very strange", ">\n\nAlso to add to your thought we can't feel temperature. Only temperature change", ">\n\nLove it - how crazy are we. We really do only interpret the world through an abstract lens. Wonder what the experience is for creatures that actually have the right tools to measure it.", ">\n\nThere's things out there that can see heat, or light that is out of our spectrum. Hear above and below our frequencies. Smell things we can't. Who knows what the world actually \"looks, smells or sounds like\" but it's super interesting that we've only scratched the surface.", ">\n\nLife creates the cheapest way for us to sense what we need to sense", ">\n\nMore like the most simple workable version available with the tools we have. I read a while ago human eyes have inherent limitations that don’t exist in some other Domains of living creatures just because of certain random (not really random) adaptations that took place 100s of millions of years ago. I’m sure it’s like this for every other body part too.", ">\n\nOh shit that's interesting. Got any examples?", ">\n\nHuman eyes have a blind spot owing to the hole in the retina where the optic nerves pass through. Octopuses have their nerves routed differently and as such have no similar blind spot.", ">\n\nAh yes this is what I was remembering thank you!", ">\n\ni have a feeling one may have seen this Qi clip", ">\n\nYes! I was reminded of it this morning in the shower haha", ">\n\nit is a good show. continue watching!", ">\n\nI once opened a faucet (tap) in the dark and didn't feel the water, i thought the faucet was broken but apparently the water were the exact temperature as my hand. Crazy!", ">\n\n\nwater were\n\nwater is singular unless you are referring to specific waters", ">\n\nThis is false. I hate this stupid viral piece of misinformation. I blame Hank Green. I love you Hank, but you were wrong here, and now tons of little internet minions are misinformed all parroting the same nonsense.\nYour body can detect wetness in two ways. \n\n\nThe mammalian dive feflex. When water touches areas of your face, your heart rate slows, your blood pressure drops, and your breathing slows. This is to help us not drown to death in a puddle. \n\n\nYou know how your fingers prune up in the water? That's not due to them being water-logged like everyone seems to think. It doesn't happen in paraplegic feet, and this tells us that it's a nervous response. We believe its to increase surface area on wet skin to increase grip. \n\n\nYour body can absolutely detect wetness. This madness needs to nipped in the buds.\nEdit: my god the vlogborthers Stans... Guys, Hank can be wrong sometimes. He's human. A human who can 100% detect wetness.", ">\n\nboth of those are consequences of your body inferring wetness, not detecting it. you havent shown proof of an actual wetness detector", ">\n\nI feel like this post is the same as saying “humans can’t technically see color, you just see different wavelengths and your brain interprets those as colors”. It’s a stupid linguistic technicality that means nothing interesting", ">\n\nnot really. we have colour detectors called eyes. we do not have wetness detectors but we all know distinctly the feeling of something wet. thats pretty interesting imo", ">\n\nOur skin is our wetness detector. It is a sensory organ just like our eyes", ">\n\nits not made for wetness tho. eyes are specifically for light. skin is for texture and temperature. theres no specific organ for wetness, yet we can \"detect\" it", ">\n\nThat’s just the method that skin uses to detect wetness. We don’t have grass receptors but I can still tell when I’m touching grass. Who cares?", ">\n\nyes, except grass isnt a feeling. wet is", ">\n\nWetness is a state of being not a feeling", ">\n\nthats certainly a new sentence lmao", ">\n\nWe can’t actually feel the carpet, just it’s temperature and texture.", ">\n\ngood one, once a few years ago my science teacher said we get the sense of touch by feeling the change in temperature and my brain did a fart. This shower thought's comparable to your comment, too.", ">\n\nWhat about the involuntary response where our fingers and toes wrinkle in water? It’s a neural response to wetness, so perhaps we can feel it on a subconscious level?", ">\n\nI thought that is physiological and related to water somehow eventually getting through the barrier of our skin?", ">\n\nI guess it depends on how one defines “feel” vs “perceive” and if one differentiates the body’s perception of wetness from the level of perception the thinking minds is capable of.", ">\n\nI don’t know man. But I do know one thing: I sure do love boobs.", ">\n\nEspecially wet ones amirite", ">\n\nthis is on the level of \"we dont actually see things as they are, we just infer it\"", ">\n\nYou can put your hand into bodywarm water, without noticing that your hand is underwater", ">\n\nAs an amateur plumber - checking for leaks by hand feel is nearly impossible. I have to use a gray t shirt or something that will visually show moisture.", ">\n\nWhen I was working in the lab and put my hands under running water while wearing gloves, I would feel like my hands were wet. But when I took them off my hands hadn’t touched water at all. It was just my brain making an inference based on temperature and probably a few more things.", ">\n\nDid we as humanity just learn this fact? Because I've been hearing about it non stop for weeks. I'd like to unsubscribe from this fact, please.", ">\n\nI never understood this. Who are you to determine which level of “feeling” this belongs to. In my book, if you’re determining the texture and temperature - you’re very much feeling it.", ">\n\nIMO this is the difference between feeling and inferring. We can feel changes related to texture, pressure, osmolarity and temperature. But we need to infer changes related to wetness (thermal and mechanic receptors) and UV radiation (sunburns). This is different from other animals, fruitflies can directly perceive wetness and the bees can see UV radiation - i.e. they have specific organs/cells to get this information.", ">\n\n\nbtw I’m not arguing with you - sure we also infer it. I just don’t agree with ruling out the option that we feel it for the reasons above", ">\n\nOP if what you say is true then help me out. I teach twenty 2nd graders that I have to teach science.\nTell me how I set up something that feels wet, that isn't wet.", ">\n\nVery cold/frozen sponge in a baggie", ">\n\nYep. Try it out even easier. Put your hand into the water while wearing latex gloves. You will feel habd and fingers getting wet but in fact they are just cold.", ">\n\nNot really a shower thought, but more dealing with particles/matter in groups or singularly. Also how people understand matter and our world through properties like wetness and such. Is one molecule of water wet by itself?", ">\n\nOne single independent molecule of water cannot be said to be in any of the three states of matter, because the states of matter describe the nature of intermolecular interactions and relative positions. \nA single molecular of water isn't a liquid, and only liquids are ever described as wet.\nThis is not to mention that many people don't consider liquids themselves to be wet anyways, and consider only the solids the liquids touch as wet.", ">\n\nAlso wetness only makes sense when there is air present. You don't have wet hair while you're submerged in water.", ">\n\nThis takes me back to the glory days. I will die on the ‘water is wet’ hill.\nWet: Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.\nYour hair is definitely covered with water when submerged in water.", ">\n\nIs water 'covered or saturated with water or another liquid'?", ">\n\nWe also never touch anything, as both surfaces (finger + thing you touch) repulse each other. There is always a tiny gap in between, even between a knife blade and your tomato. What we feel is the pressure that ensues.\nEdit: here's a short Vsauce video explaining this", ">\n\nGetting close enough to a surface to feel the repulsive force is what touch is. It's wrong to say we don't touch anything.", ">\n\nRight? What the hell do they think touch is? When two atoms exist in the same space? By that logic nothing is ever touching anything. Not a single atom in your body is touching.", ">\n\nOn the atomic level, the human body is something like 99% empty space", ">\n\nYou are correct that we do not have receptors specifically designed to sense wetness or humidity. Instead, we infer the presence of water by sensing temperature and texture changes.\nOur sense of touch relies on a number of different receptors in the skin, such as Meissner's corpuscles and Merkel cells, which respond to different types of mechanical stimuli such as pressure and vibration. When we touch an object that is wet, the texture of the object changes due to the added water, and the receptors in the skin send signals to the brain indicating that the object is wet. Additionally, wet objects are often cooler to the touch than dry objects, which can also provide cues to the brain that the object is wet.\nThis is why it can be difficult to determine if something is wet or just cold when the temperature is low. The coolness of the object can make it feel wet to the touch, even if it is dry, and make it hard to distinguish between wet and dry items.\nAnother reason why it's hard to differentiate is that wetness is generally relative. A surface that appears dry to us might be wet for another creature or a machine that has different sensitivity or different method to sense wetness.\nIt's important to note that our sense of touch is not the only way we can infer wetness, our other senses like sight, smell, and taste can also help us to infer it. Even though the sensation of wetness is not directly related to any one sense, our brain combine all these signals to give us the overall perception of wetness.", ">\n\nYou are correct that the sensation of \"wetness\" is not directly caused by the presence of moisture on the skin. Instead, our perception of wetness is inferred from other cues such as changes in temperature and texture. The skin does not have specialized receptors, called hygroreceptors, for detecting moisture.", ">\n\nBro there's no way....\nYou watched that YouTube short didn't you?", ">\n\nWe actually do have hydroreceptors, tiny organs in our skin called phalanothrecpes. They were discovered by a Polish biologist in 1966, and he determined that they functioned by receiving moisture from the air and other environments, before coursing that same moisture through your veins and into your lungs and spleen, thereby allowing people to breathe underwater for moments at a time. These organs age rapidly however, and begin to fail just out of infancy. Their presence explains why newborn babies are able to survive underwater for much longer than you might imagine, but the ability deteriorates over time.", ">\n\nWho the fuck did that experiment", ">\n\nThis is a scientific fact not a shower thought. We don't have the receptors to feel wetness.", ">\n\nDude humans are a majority water. We don’t feel wetness. We feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed", ">\n\n\nWe feel a lack of wetness. Much like your mum in bed\n\nNot sure if you're implying that op fails to make his mom wet or saying you fucked his mom but couldn't make her wet.", ">\n\nI must be a really shit X-man because I can totally feel the wetness of a towel on a cold day.", ">\n\nGlad to see someone else in here with the same “superpower”. This whole thread has me so confused. You guys can’t feel the texture of ‘wetness’??", ">\n\nUpvoted for the cordial \"I was wrong, and here is the right information link and user who showed me\" link. Admitting when wrong and learning from it feels like a rare trait these days that should be encouraged.", ">\n\nUnfortunately, in this case the correction is incorrect. The linked user is missing the point, didn't have sources to actually refute the shower thought, and is now getting pummeled with links to scientific articles confirming that humans do not have hydroreceptors. \nOur brains just have to figure out something is wet using a combination of other senses which is why people can often confuse a cold sensation with a wet one.", ">\n\nI disagreed with you but then I read the last point about touching clothes on a cold day and now I'm actually open to accepting it haha", ">\n\nThis is less a shower thought and more a scientific fact. Maybe better for TIL", ">\n\ntechnically nothing is solid either…just the interactions of forces on electron fields", ">\n\nIt's one of those things when you first hear you naturally want to disagree. But when you get out of a shower and are drying yourself, you only notice spots you've missed it you feel a breeze and the difference on wet skin.", ">\n\nBullshit, you can always feel the wetness of pissing your trousers", ">\n\nAn inference isn’t a measurement?\nHmm, So much for laser metrology.", ">\n\nWhen you feel a metal spoon you feel its absorption of heat. That exchange feels cold. This wetness inference is why when you take a shirt off a clothesline at night you wonder is it wet? Or just cold?", ">\n\nImagine magnetoreceptors. What would that be like? Would it \"look\" like something? \"Sound\" like something? \"Feel\" like something!?\nI can't imagine it", ">\n\nIs hair taken into account? Because we can definitely feel that. Or think we do? Gah, you got me ;-;", ">\n\nJust because you’ve never felt a woman wet doesn’t mean wetness doesn’t have a feeling!", ">\n\nThere was a YouTube short about this from the British show QI", ">\n\nSometimes I can't tell if I stepped in a tiny bit of puppy pee on the rug or if it was just a really cold spot :(", ">\n\nIts not hard to determin. The laundry will be roughly at ambient temp and if it feels really cold it is due to moisture that increases thermal conductivity and heat capacity. \nBut yeah, we cant really sense wetness.", ">\n\nTechnically this isn't a shower thought it's just a fact, u less you reverse engineered this fact from your showering experiences", ">\n\nI get reposting for karma farming..but not absurd shit like you cant tell if cold clothes are wet or not. Why repost that?\nThe human body can't detect heat or light or sound either. It only detects when some part of the body is affected in those ways.", ">\n\nI once read it is your feet that are the most perceptive to moisture in the human body.", ">\n\nSomeone didn't do the dive reflex lab in biology! This is a myth, we can detect wetness.", ">\n\nIf we infer it from the sensory input we receive, that means we feel it too.", ">\n\n🤣... Always love going down this path. yeah, everything is inferred maaaaaan. \nWe don't actually hear music... we infer it from vibrations on eardrums. \nWe don't see color...we infer it from different wavelengths of photons detected at the retina. \nNothing from the \"outside\" world actually reaches the brain - it's all second-hand messages riding the nerve streets and highways to the brain.", ">\n\nYou can't see more than 3 colors, you just infer the all other colors by ratio and intensity", ">\n\nSee, this is tricky. You have to define \"see\". Yes, you only have 3 color receptors, but after your brain gets done with it, you're seeing more than 3 colors. I consider the brain's function in this to be part of \"seeing\".", ">\n\nI feel like it was only two weeks ago that scientists came out with an article on this and it was all over social media", ">\n\nIsn’t the texture the of water how we feel water?\nYou said we can only infer from temperature and texture. If I jump in a pool and feel wet, I would be feeling the texture of water.", ">\n\nAs the temperature drop the ability of air to hold water decrease exponentially so the relative humidity increase and its often close to 90%+ so it may play role in the above scenario . Just a thought.", ">\n\nWe actually do, since the pruning of your fingers and toes is a nervous response.", ">\n\nYeah my daughter loves telling people water is not wet. It’s not until something touches it and that object becomes wet. Then she’ll ask that adult if they think fish drink water?", ">\n\nLol you’re trying to pass off something that you learned on Reddit last week as a shower thought?\nThis requires very specific knowledge, it doesn’t just come to you during a shower 🤪", ">\n\nI think this take is similar to saying \"we can't actually see yellow\". Technically true that we don't have any light-sensitive cells tuned to yellow, but just because we rely on a combination of sensory cells to perceive yellow doesn't mean we can't \"see\" it.", ">\n\nApparently we don't have sense to recognise wetness, what we perceive is temperature of liquid and it's eventual motion.", ">\n\nOhh yeah baby, I love it when your temperature and texture are just right. Do I make you so the right temperate and texture down there that my fingers can infer your relative liquidity accurately... \nWhat, you're just really cold. Oh, ok.", ">\n\nAt this point, reading through the comments, I'm not sure if this is the next flat earth craze or if it's hard science. Mostly, I am OK with either answer as it's not going to impact my day-to-day in any real way.", ">\n\nActually The sense of touch in humans is mediated by a variety of receptors located in the skin, including Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel cells, and Pacinian corpuscles. These receptors respond to different types of stimuli, such as pressure, vibration, and temperature. When liquid comes into contact with the skin, it can cause changes in temperature and pressure, which are then detected by these receptors and translated into the sensation of wetness. Additionally, the nerve receptors in the skin also detect other properties of liquids, such as their chemical composition, which can also contribute to the sensation of wetness.", ">\n\n\"we use a combination of temperature and texture\" .... Then that's how we feel wetness. You defined the very thing you said we can't do. The body said \"use a combination of temperature and texture to describe a particular sensation and we'll call that 'wetness'\".", ">\n\nFYI Hygroreceptors are for humidity/vapor, Water's gas state. \nAs a side note. There are a lot of receptors humans don't have. We only have \"5 senses\" after all.", ">\n\nThe “5 senses” model conflates a lot of types of receptors that we do have, though. “Touch” in particular covers a bunch of different ones.", ">\n\nthat one time I unknowingly smoked salvia and thought I had jumped in the pool... took me like 20 minutes to realize I wasn't actually wet", ">\n\nIsn’t wetness just a quality like rough or squishy, though? We use a combination of senses to identify patterns which we then categorize?\nLike, yeah, I don’t have a special “wet” sense, but I also don’t have a special sense that tells me something is a sponge or made of gold.\nWater, specifically, doesn’t resist pressure, finely coats the skin when touched, and has a specific evaporation point, and together those sensations are “wet”.\nWhat are people even reacting to here…", ">\n\nYou've never had your period? If you did, trust me, you feel wetness.", ">\n\nThanks Stupid Science,\nSo if I piss on you now, you wouldn't feel it?", ">\n\nWe feel the warmth caused by the pee", ">\n\nWhen I take mushrooms I always think that everything I touch is wet", ">\n\nEh, it doesn't seem that interesting to me. Maybe just being nit-picky, but most of the human experience is inferred from our aggregate sensations including memory and identity.", ">\n\nThe same with anything else also:\nWe don't feel cold. We just feel the absence of energy\nWe don't hear sounds, the brain interprets soundwaves as sounds\nEtc etc", ">\n\nIf you want to start questioning everything, we can’t even necessarily measure intensity of light, or true color. Our vision is entirely contrast based. Our body detects and responds to large levels of brightness (squinting, pupil dilation) but this is to optimize for contrast so our visual system can make sense of the world. We are unable to detect small differences in light intensity, and our visual system is often fooled by context such as illumination color." ]

[]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?" ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend.", ">\n\nSome even blame themselves that they weren't good enough." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend.", ">\n\nSome even blame themselves that they weren't good enough.", ">\n\nWhich can be right." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend.", ">\n\nSome even blame themselves that they weren't good enough.", ">\n\nWhich can be right.", ">\n\nDisagree. If your partner isn't enough - whatever that means for you - have the decency of ending the realtionship and spare them the emotional damage unfaithfulness causes." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend.", ">\n\nSome even blame themselves that they weren't good enough.", ">\n\nWhich can be right.", ">\n\nDisagree. If your partner isn't enough - whatever that means for you - have the decency of ending the realtionship and spare them the emotional damage unfaithfulness causes.", ">\n\nI think a lot of relationships are weak BTW. \nLike, you don't have six pac anymore, cancel. We don't have sex weekly anymore, cancel. You couldn't read my mind, cancel. You don't let me go on cruise with my \"bff\" without you, you are so co-defendant, red flag, cancel. You don't want to sign prenup, cancel." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend.", ">\n\nSome even blame themselves that they weren't good enough.", ">\n\nWhich can be right.", ">\n\nDisagree. If your partner isn't enough - whatever that means for you - have the decency of ending the realtionship and spare them the emotional damage unfaithfulness causes.", ">\n\nI think a lot of relationships are weak BTW. \nLike, you don't have six pac anymore, cancel. We don't have sex weekly anymore, cancel. You couldn't read my mind, cancel. You don't let me go on cruise with my \"bff\" without you, you are so co-defendant, red flag, cancel. You don't want to sign prenup, cancel.", ">\n\nIs this unpopular? Seems pretty common sense to me. Not that the third party is blameless (unless they didn’t know), but if someone cheats or gets close to doing so, obviously there is something quite off either with the relationship or the person." ]

[ "There is a ton of a nuance in these situations. Redditors view everything in relationships as too black and white.", ">\n\nIt's always the girlfriend and the mistress tearing each others hair out when they?", ">\n\nSHOULD be teaming up against the shitty boyfriend.", ">\n\nSome even blame themselves that they weren't good enough.", ">\n\nWhich can be right.", ">\n\nDisagree. If your partner isn't enough - whatever that means for you - have the decency of ending the realtionship and spare them the emotional damage unfaithfulness causes.", ">\n\nI think a lot of relationships are weak BTW. \nLike, you don't have six pac anymore, cancel. We don't have sex weekly anymore, cancel. You couldn't read my mind, cancel. You don't let me go on cruise with my \"bff\" without you, you are so co-defendant, red flag, cancel. You don't want to sign prenup, cancel.", ">\n\nIs this unpopular? Seems pretty common sense to me. Not that the third party is blameless (unless they didn’t know), but if someone cheats or gets close to doing so, obviously there is something quite off either with the relationship or the person.", ">\n\nAlso, instead of sounding like an idiot, my point is that if ur partner cheated on u it’s not the third person to blame the most," ]