Because explanations soothe us.
A good explanation feels solid. It gives shape to chaos. It reduces uncertainty. In that relief, we begin to treat the explanation as if it were the thing itself. Ancient traditions called this maya — the veil of appearance. Modern psychology calls it cognitive bias. Either way, the mind prefers coherence over confusion. When a model works well enough, we stop seeing it as a model.
Our brains are prediction machines. We don’t experience raw reality — we experience interpretations shaped by things like language, memory, expectation, and culture. Confirmation bias rewards us for defending our existing map. The illusion of explanatory depth makes us believe we understand far more than we do. Over time, the framework becomes invisible. We no longer see it as a lens — we see it as the world.
That is why intellectual humility matters. Socrates famously claimed wisdom in knowing that he did not know. Not because knowledge is impossible, but because our explanations are always partial. In my writing, the correction is not the opposite extreme of cynicism. It is disciplined modesty. Reality remains what it is. Our descriptions are attempts, attempts that are sometimes brilliant, sometimes flawed, but they are always representations and provisional.
