I get it; you want to avoid circularity. Unfortunately there's always going to be some in our conjectures, because we're all humans almost always trying to justify some set of implementations of human societies because we like the incentivized benefits of collective organization. People reach for something they think is truer than their own context to guide them. For vanusa, that's the value of knowledge, developed in academic institutions. I don't blame them for that.

I think "the truth" means what brings us simultaneously to the greatest understanding, peace, respect for existence and consciousness, freedom from misery, and victory over cruelty. Anything that, over the long run, takes these away in greater amounts than it gives them back is a falsehood. If truth is not this thing, then why ought we seek it in the first place? I think that's how we can all be less of a slave to our incentives (except the incentive for the truth), even if they are to spread FUD and assert our own objective correctness :>