The “tiny explosions” mental model doesn’t make new predictions in the way that the Carnot model does, but it does encode and compress an enormous amount of useful pre-discovered information. For example, that a car engine is hot like fire and will burn you, that if you mix gasoline and air and light it, it will explode, that a car engine will be made of strong stuff, that a car engine is in something of a delicate engineered balance, and if you make large changes to it, it will typically become extremely loud and catch fire. I think this is enough to distinguish the “tiny explosions” model from typical “guess the teacher’s password” knowledge.
The “tiny explosions” mental model doesn’t make new predictions in the way that the Carnot model does, but it does encode and compress an enormous amount of useful pre-discovered information. For example, that a car engine is hot like fire and will burn you, that if you mix gasoline and air and light it, it will explode, that a car engine will be made of strong stuff, that a car engine is in something of a delicate engineered balance, and if you make large changes to it, it will typically become extremely loud and catch fire. I think this is enough to distinguish the “tiny explosions” model from typical “guess the teacher’s password” knowledge.