Hi man, don’t feel stupid for not knowing this!
The noise basis is the ‘start’ or basis noise. The distortion distorts that noise. The easiest way to see what is happening is by looking mostly at the Preview and set the Amount (which is the amount of distortion of the basis noise) to 0, so you only have the basic noise (try the different noise patterns that are available) and then slowly increase the distortion Amount to se how the noise gets distorted:
