"Statement about what is there, what it does, and how and why"[^1] An explanation can have reach - meaning it can solve problems beyond those it was created to solve. We create new explanations by creatively making guesses that, if true, would explain what we are trying to explain. We then use criticism and experience to find errors and improve or replace those guesses. We can be highly confident, but never certain about any explanation or experience. There is no such thing as "raw" experience. All our experiences come through layers of conscious and unconscious interpretation. It's also all subject to [[Fallibilism]]. But we can still improve our explanations. Good explanations are hard to vary while still accounting for what they purport to account for. Bad explanations are easy to vary. Being rational is attempting to solve problems by seeking good explanations; actively pursuing error-correction by creating criticisms of both existing ideas and new proposals. The growth of knowledge consists of correcting misconceptions in our explanations. Over time, we get an increased amount of background knowledge: Familiar and currently uncontroversial knowledge. [^1]: _Wikipedia_. 2025. “_The Beginning of Infinity_.” August 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Beginning_of_Infinity&oldid=1303803115](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Beginning_of_Infinity&oldid=1303803115). [[BeginningInfinity2025|Annotations]]