Pope Recap

 Here's the deal: humans lie. No matter how effective your epistemic system, someone will claim he passed it when he didn't. 

 Humans will, for political reasons, agree with his judgment even if they're not gullibly fooled, because it happens to benefit them in the short term.

 Humans lie rather a lot, and even if they didn't, the lies result in culture rot. Lies can be adjusted to match politics, whereas truth cannot. Lies can be adjusted to be persuasive, whereas truth cannot. In short humans are reliably lying sacks of deviant shit. Humans love falsehood and hate the truth.

 Politicians then engrain the lies into the culture as a way of retaining power - after all, if they don't, their rivals will engrain the opposite lie. All human culture naturally converges on pure Satanism and thus failure, suffering, and death.

 Hence, you need a Pope. Someone has to decide who is lying and who isn't. You need a custodian of the epistemic system, who has the authority to forcibly command gullible idiots to stop being so gullible. When two competitors are both claiming Da Trooth, the Pope's job is to reward the non-liar.

 

 Cultures with good Popes don't rot. Cultures with corrupt Popes can't compete. 

 Once Popes exist, the correct way to select between Popes is Exit. Choose the culture you think can compete. If you're right, you won't die. 

 Having a good Pope has never been tried in recorded history. 

 You don't need permission. You can do it right now if you want. Or rather, I expect you haven't already done it because you hate truth and love lies. It's not like [Pope] is some esoteric occultism only a genius can come up with.