Tyler Cowen argues in a TED talk (~15 min) that stories pervade our mental lives. He thinks they are a major source of cognitive biases and, on the margin, we should be more suspicious of them - especially simple stories. Here's an interesting quote about the meta-level:
What story do you take away from Tyler Cowen? ...Another possibility is you might tell a story of rebirth. You might say, "I used to think too much in terms of stories, but then I heard Tyler Cowen, and now I think less in terms of stories". ...You could also tell a story of deep tragedy. "This guy Tyler Cowen came and he told us not to think in terms of stories, but all he could do was tell us stories about how other people think too much in terms of stories."
I haven't gotten around to deconstructing those terms yet, but off the top of my head:
A 'harmful to X' action is one that has a long-term effect on it that reduces its ability to function. Examples:
A 'good for X' action, in this sense ('helpful' would be a better word), is one that has a long-term effect on it that increases its ability to function. Examples:
The question isn't usually whether an action does harm or good or both. The question is how much importance to give to the various harms and goods involved.
For any concept, you can find a sufficiently rich context that makes the concept inadequate. The concept would be useful in simpler situations, but breaks down in more sophisticated ones. It's still recognized in them, by the same procedure that allows to recognize the concept where it is useful.
A concept is only genuinely useless if there hardly are any contexts where it's useful, not if there are situations where it isn't. You are too eager to explain useful tools away by presenting them with existence proofs of insurmountable challenges and the older cousins that should get deployed in them.
See also: least convenient possible world, fallacy of compression, scales of justice fallacy.