What happens if you "cut" an important file, and then forget to paste it before copying something else? You could easily loose many hours of work!
That can happen with text too, of course, but because text takes up more screen real-estate, selecting lots of text "feels" dangerous, so you're less likely to accidentally screw yourself.
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When you "cut" a file in early Windows, did it disappear from the original location, or did the icon fade out as on modern platforms? IMO, the fade makes it clear what is happening, and is a great example of how minor visual tweaks can be imbued with lots of meaning.
Windows 95 behaved like Windows does today: "cutting" a file faded out the icon until it was pasted someplace else.
Prior versions of Windows did not have an equivalent to the "cut" operation; for example, Windows 3.1's File Manager moved files via a "File > Move..." menu option, which opened a dialog with two text fields to specify the source and destination. (Copying behaved similarly; the document-editing-inspired Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-X bindings used today were all introduced for file management in the Windows world in Windows 95.)
Cutting a file sets its hidden attribute. If you have turned on display of hidden files then they do indeed appear faded, but you have to be a fairly advanced user for that – for most people they will just seem to disappear.
If you cut or copy another file the the first file will be unhidden, and I suppose also on a clean shutdown. Overall it's still confusing for a normal user who doesn't see hidden files, especially if they intentionally used cut without paste to delete a sensitive file.
That can happen with text too, of course, but because text takes up more screen real-estate, selecting lots of text "feels" dangerous, so you're less likely to accidentally screw yourself.
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When you "cut" a file in early Windows, did it disappear from the original location, or did the icon fade out as on modern platforms? IMO, the fade makes it clear what is happening, and is a great example of how minor visual tweaks can be imbued with lots of meaning.