God's Eye View

The God's Eye View is the assumption of a perspective from which one can evaluate things "objectively" and come to the "right" decision. It applies to both moral and mathematical decisions. See conceptual metaphor for an alternative way to look at these problems.

The GEV is normally considered a point of view issue in history, or subject-object problem in linguistics or unequal power relation problem in sociology.

In religious circules it may be considered to be blasphemy to make a claim that something is "true" without following some strict process. For example in 922 AD the Persian mystic Al-Hallaj was executed after many trials and counter trials. His crime? He wandered the streets in a state of mystical "fana" while uttering "I am the truth".

By constrast, by the late 1990s, obvious liars could pretty much take control of most of the military power on Earth, and seriously expect to be re-elected. This suggests that democracy may actually be the worst usurper of God-view.

By contrast, the problem of GodKing on large public wikis is not so bad, humourous, even. When a sysop power structure agrees that something is not neutral point of view (whatever they mean by that on that day) they actually mean "we can exclude this without angering our great GodKing." That is all they mean, that is, there is no possible objective definition of "not neutral", as neutrality itself is factionally defined. Disguised or anticipated God's Eye view is of course the job of a priestly hierarchy.

Typical beliefs generated without critical thought that are inevitably wrong, all of which suffer to some degree from GEV pollution:

• "research and opinion can be differentiated objectively"
• "truth and heresy can be determined by a high priest"
• "sysops can objectively determine who are trolls" (or priests can determine who are heretics or decide who should be subject to witch hunt)
• "common sense should guide us"