Moving toward a less deceptive interface...
So how do we tell whether our mental model is closer to reality rather than just rhetorically convincing? The answer that has slowly emerged in philosophy and science is not a single test but a set of structural constraints that good models must satisfy. These constraints allow us to detect improvement without requiring direct access to reality. By setting these limits, we can check whether we are mentally moving closer to reality or moving away from it.
The third constraint is explanatory compression. Better models explain more phenomena with fewer assumptions. When a single framework unifies previously unrelated observations, it suggests that the model has captured deeper structure in the world. This kind of compression appears throughout the history of science. For example, one set of physical laws can explain planetary motion, falling objects, and ocean tides. Persuasive stories usually accumulate extra assumptions rather than simplifying them.