Explanatory Depth's Illusion

Ask people how well they understand a zipper, a toilet, a bicycle — they rate themselves highly. Now ask them to explain, step by step, how it works. Watch the ratings collapse.

This is the illusion of explanatory depth: we mistake familiarity for understanding. Because we use a thing daily, we feel we own its mechanism. In fact we own a button-press. The inner workings are a fog we have never walked through.

Politics runs on this fog. Opinions on complex policies are held with the confidence of experts until the holder is asked for the mechanism — how, exactly, step by step? — and the confidence quietly deflates. Strangely, asking for the explanation softens extremism better than arguing does.

So use the test on yourself: before you fight for a view, explain the thing, in plain steps, to an imaginary child. Where you stall, you do not understand — you have only agreed. Knowing the size of your own fog is the beginning of knowledge.