[feralimal2]

This is a useful explanation - thanks!

What does this mean to the value of what we are "seeing"?

The example used before - that it is equivalent to a deaf man seeing a music visualisation - is apt. It is some sort of model, but not particularly close. It might still be useful, of course.

[Groxx]

Not "seeing a music visualisation" (was it edited maybe?), reading braille. STM involves sticking a probe microscopically close to the thing-being-scanned, and reading how the surface's atoms deflect it. Which is very close to "literally feeling" the surface, as all "touch" is just electrons repelling each other at a distance - this is just at a slightly larger distance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope

Maybe a more human-scale-friendly analogy would be "finding the hot burner by moving your hand near it". In STM, each atom is a hot burner. You can pretty accurately figure out the arrangement of burners on your stove without needing to see or touch it.