All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Ideas are important, even when not supported by observable evidence.  Even when observable evidence suggests they are wrong.

Religion, for example.  Undeniably important, but it is impossible to prove that a god or gods exist, impossible to know while alive whether you will continue to be aware (and thus "exist" in some sense) after your death, and impossible to know if your thinking and behavior while alive will in any way change what happens to you after your death.  Is religion wrong, or it is useful?

Many years ago, most people believed in a flat earth.  We've looked down on our planet from a long way away, and it looks spherical.  But a flat earth model can still be useful.  The spherical earth is big enough compared to how far a person standing on its surface can walk in a day that it can be modeled as flat.  The arc of a thrown baseball cannot be measured as different than would be predicted on a flat earth.

Simple ideas can be more powerful than complicated ones.  Simple ideas can be more easily shown to be in conflict with "facts", and thus they can be more easily challenged.  But does an idea have to be called wrong if it is not always right?  Is it always wrong to intentionally cause pain or suffering in someone else?  Does what goes up always come down?

Our language encourages absolute statements.  We use words like "never" and make predictions with words like "it will".  We may not worry as we state our beliefs about the past and present ("truths") and our guesses about the future ("predictions") with what appears be certainty.  We assume that minor inaccuracies will be ignored or forgiven.

The world in which we live is complex and large, but we see it as simple and local.  The room in which this is being typed has walls, and for the moment only what is within the walls is visible to me.  I could imagine that beyond the walls was only dark vacuum.  I could imagine the room poised on the back of a giant turtle, standing on the back of an elephant.  It would not change what I see on the walls, or the screen in front of me.

The earth is flat.