Introduction: The Lure We Never Name
If the previous series left you unsettled, it may be because something you relied on instinctively — your sense of when an explanation is successful — has been quietly questioned.
Most of us experience a subtle but persistent feeling: an explanation feels right. It satisfies, it reassures, it ends the nagging of uncertainty. It feels convincing in a way that seems objective and reliable.
Yet, as we have begun to see, that feeling is deceptive. It masks a hidden machinery of judgment.
1. Feeling as Evidence
We are trained to trust our intuition about explanation. In conversation, in classrooms, in reading, we encounter accounts that “click” — and we accept them almost immediately.
This is not merely laziness. Feeling is a heuristic: a rapid guide to plausibility when engagement is costly or information is abundant. But like any heuristic, it is fallible.
An explanation that clicks does so because it aligns with familiar patterns of thinking, not necessarily because it captures the phenomenon more accurately or fully.
2. Patterns That Pull Us In
Certain features make explanations particularly compelling:
Depth: tracing back in time or mechanism produces a sense of causal security.
Simplicity: fewer moving parts and tidy narratives reduce cognitive load.
Scope: connecting multiple phenomena under a single account feels powerful.
Authority: invoking experts, domains, or models lends reassurance.
Individually, these are not inherently misleading. Together, they form a potent siren song: an explanation feels convincing because it triggers habitual confidence, not because it has survived careful relational scrutiny.
3. Why We Miss the Patterns
This persuasive force explains why the failure modes identified in the first series often go unnoticed:
Causal depth is mistaken for ontological depth because we intuitively value “further back.”
Total accounts feel complete because we equate narrative coherence with insight.
Models and measurement feel authoritative because we trust formal structure and numbers.
Regularity feels like necessity because stability reassures.
Each of these is felt, not reasoned. The instinct is so reliable that questioning it feels like a betrayal of common sense.
4. Setting the Stage
The purpose of this series is to make these invisible criteria explicit.
We are not yet critiquing specific theories. Instead, we are asking:
What do we really consider a good explanation, and why do our intuitions mislead us so often?
By bringing these hidden rules to light, we equip ourselves to judge explanations deliberately rather than habitually.
In the next post, we will examine causal depth versus present intelligibility, showing precisely how the explanatory instinct misfires when we equate depth with understanding.
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