Perennial Science: Peer-to-Peer-Review in God as First Criterion of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (February 17th, 2025)

Abstract

A purely peer-to-peer-review distributed study network would allow digital politics to converge on true social norms, expectations, and even laws, without going through social media censorship algorithms, or governmental institutions. Esoteric-exoteric writing provides part of the solution, but the main benefit is lost if a nation state or social media algorithm rather than peer-to-peer-review is required to verify the criterion of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in God and perennial tradition . We propose a solution to the criterion of Truth problem , using a peer-to-peer-review distributed study network for education. The Authority of ancient texts forms the golden chain of perennial tradition, a tradition of questions and ideas that never changes or corrupts without costs that are too great to bear. The perennial tradition serves as the proof that political philosophy is the highest social science which organizes the polity above money, contracts, and opinion, and also serves as proof of God’s existence . As long as the majority of the patronage network is controlled by honest God-fearing political philosophers who value philosophy above money, honors, and repute, and is not controlled by corrupt spies or financiers who attack the network, they will remain in accord with the perennial science of God and outpace corrupt spies and financiers. The network of distributed study itself requires minimal structure. Philosophical discussion is shared on a best effort basis, students and patrons can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the highest ranking treatise as proof of the best political philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in God, as what organizes the polity over and above money, contracts, and opinions.

Introduction

Politics on the internet has come to rely almost exclusively on social media algorithms and propaganda as the trusted methods to distribute, organize, and coordinate knowledge. While the system works well enough for most political commentators, the social media still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of short-term thinking, immediate gratification, noise, misinformation, and corporate ownership who use social media for data collection and state surveillance. The most perfectly True, Good, and Beautiful expressions of God are not possible in that medium, since liberal nation-states censor or surveil thought according to man’s opinion of what is true, good, and beautiful, and not according to God’s view of these things . The cost of censoring and surveilling speech decreases the Glory that ought to be given to God, and limits how much holiness and sanctity man can achieve, and therefore puts a limit on man’s powers to love and do good for his neighbor, by God’s Infinite Grace and Love. While there is still the possibility that man alone determines what is true, good, and beautiful, man remains cut off from God’s plenitude. Users of the internet must be distrustful of the information they receive, because they are bombarded with noise, advertising, and propaganda, overwhelming their senses with more chaos than they need. A certain percentage of misinformation on social media is unavoidable. The costs of information uncertainties can be avoided by honest conversation, writing, and solid social norms, but no marketplace or patronage exists to ensure that the Eternal Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of political philosophy is possible without a nation state, its social science, and its social media surveillance AI algorithms ordered against God.

....

Does it remind you of anything?

https://ark.page/archive?url=https%3A%2F%2Fark.page%2Fraw%2F82f5fa7a.txt

Is this advocating that we return to an 18th century moral system, and then enable something similar to our current "peer review" system but with morally righteous people in positions of power rather than the cretins of today?

If so I can certain sympathize, but fundamentally doubt how this would ever be put into reality.

This feels to me that this is the theologized version of a redditor saying "can't we all just be heckin good people?!?"

Now, I may misunderstand what "A purely peer-to-peer-review distributed study network" refers to, but if you choose the word "peer-to-peer" you are evoking the image of the peer review system of today which is obviously a failure and neglects the fact that science is made through revolutions, and discrediting the works of all your peers once you have discovered a greater truth.

So I do agree with this in so far as we advocate a patronage system by wise and wealthy patrons, with scientific work being shared in a free and open manner, but I find the religiosity mostly performative and no useful to a discussion of the future of science.

I say this as a God-fearing man myself, who strives to perfect nature with my own creations as God intended.

An atheist friend tried the Christian chatbot for some questions about life -- and found it more insightful than ChatGPT. You can try it out here:
https://apologist.ai/en

>>2649
Thanks for the comments, it's really helpful!

>> Is this advocating that we return to an 18th century moral system, and then enable something similar to our current "peer review" system but with morally righteous people in positions of power rather than the cretins of today?

yes, but not 18th century moral system, I claim there is a perennial science of the divine life from which true morality becomes almost self evident.

>> If so I can certain sympathize, but fundamentally doubt how this would ever be put into reality.

The way it can be put into reality is through ordinal inscriptions, which serve as a measure of intrinsic value in immutable ledgers, which changes the laws of economics, so that the economy is organised around pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

>> This feels to me that this is the theologized version of a redditor saying "can't we all just be heckin good people?!?"

this is very insightful and helpful, thank you.

>> Now, I may misunderstand what "A purely peer-to-peer-review distributed study network" refers to, but if you choose the word "peer-to-peer" you are evoking the image of the peer review system of today which is obviously a failure and neglects the fact that science is made through revolutions, and discrediting the works of all your peers once you have discovered a greater truth.

Another great insight. It does strike me as true that invoking peer-to-peer-review is the image of a failed academic credentialing, but I don't think my concept neglects that science is made through revolutions, or in this case, counter-revolution. My point would twofold: 1.) peer review is based on mere social agreement, rather than shared understanding of Infinitely Perfect and Good God, who is the source and summit of truth. 2.) the internet already inherently operates upon the principle of organic peer-to-peer-review, but the underlying software architectures don't facilitate this, because they are broadcast-based media inherently incentivized towards pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Similarly with academic peer-review, it is based in mere social agreements, rather than founded upon the principle that God is the Perfect Self-Consistent Truth about reality and man can experience a foretaste of the divine life here on earth.

>> So I do agree with this in so far as we advocate a patronage system by wise and wealthy patrons, with scientific work being shared in a free and open manner, but I find the religiosity mostly performative and no useful to a discussion of the future of science.

Thank you, and your point is duly noted. The future of science that I advocate here has to do with the science of the inner life of man in God. The domains of material science and divine science are separate and harmonious with one another, they serve one another without intermixing. Instead of "religion within the limits of reason" - "science within the limits of God"

>> I say this as a God-fearing man myself, who strives to perfect nature with my own creations as God intended.

God bless you and protect you

>>2652
But how do you actually put any of those theological axioms into practice? This kind of thing always sounds nice but in practice either amounts of hypocrisy as everyone pays at most lip service to the theological foundation, or some kind of totalitarianism where you actually try to enforce it. I don't think you're actually going to get everyone to agree on their theology. That's tower of babel thinking, frankly. So anything based on unenforceable agreement is going to be a much smaller faction within a larger discourse.

Sometimes you do get larger worldview coordination, but that's usually based on some combination of meaningless political/religious taboos left over from some era of conflict, or fundamental techniques that your civilization is exploiting. Eg we currently still live under WW2 mythology, as much damage as that does us, and our civilization uses science as a foundational layer of agreement for many things because of the actual material power of the practice of science and its inherent worldview. The ideological power of science doesn't come from ideas, but from the ways of seeing necessary to get certain physical results. So in your case, what actual system of invaluable practice is going to be entangled with your theological "science", that a skeptic can't just dismiss?

Let's illustrate the difficulty another way. I too am a partisan of God as the essential truth of the world. But then you pull out this stuff like "a foretaste of the divine life here on earth" which bakes in a whole lot of very debatable and historically very debated baggage. What is this other "divine life" that presumably comes after? Do you mean the kingdom of heaven than Jesus taught? There are multiple interpretations there, even if you take it seriously. To be clear I deny that there is any other life than this one. The bulk of Christians are reasonably in agreement about this though, but then Christianity fell off the train of modernity at least a century ago. If you mean Christianity should be driving the train, well that's nice but first it has to catch up and get back on!

By that I mean this: Christianity, and western theology in general, has not seriously and officially engaged with the worldview of science for about 200 years. We have learned much about the shape of God's hand through the work of Darwin etc. Many Christians still deny Darwin, and those who don't fail to integrate him deeply. Is this not the most profound possible fact that we know the method of God's creation, and that this method applies to us still? Does it not raise questions about how we are to engage with this to breed ourselves and all this? And that's just one angle that could be explored. But again we live under absurd taboos about these things. Do you have a plan for either a theology of Darwinism or to get out from under the taboos? Or just dogmatic theology of the kind that fell off the train? And I mean that: Christianity got left behind because its stance to these questions is not curiosity, but apologetics and dogma. And so here we are in the godless future. How do we get back? Theology has to catch up and provide a way forward and not backward!

Could it possible that you have not heard that God is dead?

>>2656

You may want to read the original paper that is linked.

>> But how do you actually put any of those theological axioms into practice?

As I go into in the paper, through ordinal inscriptions, and a self-proving theorem of digital economics.

As I'm wary of turning this into a big religion versus science back-and-forth, I'm just going to say, it might be good to do some further reading on the subject, history of science. You may be surprised.

Replace the notion of God and perennial tradition with the understanding that God is our fundamental reality, and any knowledge that is aligned with reality will be clear over time. So we can instead rely on the fact that the truth will be made evident over time. This avoids the problems of the priestly caste that interpret tradition that ultimately tends towards distortion.

Embrace intellectual combat as the true virtue, as the truth will only arise when confronted by adversaries. The most important adversary is God (reality) and thus all that can be physically tested should be. The next best adversary is a peer with a difference of thought. So any system where this as the fitness function will tend towards Truth, as everything built on lies will eventually fall.

>>2659
We are all well aware of the origins of science out of the christian philosophical tradition. That does not give any particular dogma a provable primacy.

I read your paper, and I like the general Platonist philosopher-caste vibe and idea of a network of friends forming their worldview together. That's what we're in for around here as well. But again you are assuming an intersubjective verifiability of a particular philosophical canon. Or if you are doing something else, it is buried under that. That is not how it works. Worldviews are matters of perspective, multiple self-consistent philosophical perspectives are possible, and none is provable. Certainly not the one you appear to be operating in, which again many of us are not because it substitutes smug insistence on its dogma for actual argument.

I'll play Glaucon here: do you wish to actually persuade us, or merely to convince yourself that we should be persuaded? If the former, you're going to have to address yourself to people who don't share your particular premises, and at least acknowledge that it is possible for an honest gentleman to disagree. Show us something we can't dismiss.

>>2660
I agree with this anon. Philosophy is a combat art. Plato articulated it as a warrior-caste activity as part of a single-minded education for war. Truth comes out on the mat, the battlefield, and the anonymous internet forum. But combat requires difference of perspective and is never deterministic. While we tend towards the truth in philosophical combat, we only do so indirectly. The most important truths are revealed in the agon, not proven in argument.

>>2660

>> Replace the notion of God and perennial tradition with the understanding that God is our fundamental reality, and any knowledge that is aligned with reality will be clear over time.

God is our fundamental reality, but not necessarily in this life. i think pantheism results in impiety, hubris and absurdity. But I'm not opposed to the idea that God is the fundamental reality in distinction to our relative reality.

>> Embrace intellectual combat as the true virtue, as the truth will only arise when confronted by adversaries. The most important adversary is God (reality) and thus all that can be physically tested should be. The next best adversary is a peer with a difference of thought. So any system where this as the fitness function will tend towards Truth, as everything built on lies will eventually fall.

I would agree. More on this below.

>>2661

>> But again you are assuming an intersubjective verifiability of a particular philosophical canon.

Yes, exactly. I think therre is a very certain philosophical cannon of works that does reveal a kind of organic science of intersubjective verifiability. There is a certain true understanding of the whole cannon of works of Western tradition that allows for this. In my view the shared object of study is the interior life of man and his participation in God.

>> Worldviews are matters of perspective, multiple self-consistent philosophical perspectives are possible, and none is provable.

I agree multiple self-consistent perspectives are possible, but not that none are provable. The difference in perspectives doesn't point to their equivalence or the absence of universal truth, rather the difference of opinion points to genuine concern over something substantial, the truth of things. That doesn't necessarily mean the difference can be fully resolved, but harmonized perhaps.. ?

>> I'll play Glaucon here: do you wish to actually persuade us, or merely to convince yourself that we should be persuaded? If the former, you're going to have to address yourself to people who don't share your particular premises, and at least acknowledge that it is possible for an honest gentleman to disagree.

Glaucon, since you're not convinced of my account of the best use of the internet for us personally, perhaps we can ask the question, what would the best use of the internet overall look like? If we can reason about the "best internet-in-speech", then perhaps afterwards we can figure out what would be the best use of the internet for our perspective personally..

>> But combat requires difference of perspective and is never deterministic. While we tend towards the truth in philosophical combat, we only do so indirectly. The most important truths are revealed in the agon, not proven in argument.

Exactly, and i'm not sure the indirect approximation of truth and the truth that is proven are necessarily mutually exclusive if we have a shared understanding of what is implied indirectly or what is truly in God..