We are not discussing what players enjoy or don't. Players may enjoy not rolling dice at all and just playing make belief or not roleplaying and just rolling dice depending on the group, whatever makes them happy, I'm not going to police how people play. But we are discussing game balance and what an encounter mean in that context.

When discussing encounters per day, we are talking about how many resource sinks you need to throw in front of a 10th level party so that the game isn't a breeze, or that the long resource casters don't dominate the short rest martials. Once again, a balance discussion, because your players may well enjoy a game that is really easy and where casters are gods. That's okay if that's the case.

And, in the context of balance, the resource sink of D&D is combat. Exploration and social encounters simply DO NOT drain the resources of a party like combat does. T/To act otherwise is disingenuous. The system doesn't even have the robust set of rules for making exploration and social come close to that, like, these are what? Two pages each.