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Ah, yes, it should have been: “Buddhism, on the other hand, is very much about empiricism, [first-person], and third party verification on the mental [and psychosocial] level and in terms of things that can be tested through mental processes via subjective experience.”

So you’re verifying things subjectively and often with an experienced teacher who can help to verify your progress from their own experience (and even possibly through supranormal ways (psychic powers). But even there, the Buddha gives guidelines on what to look for and how to judge a good teacher from bad, which again is very empirical. The only issue is, the primary focus of the path is something immaterial, our conscious experience of the world, and there’s no real way to test consciousness. One can only see corollary physical phenomena associated with consciousness and its effects on the body and vice versa, never the subject itself. That said, the Buddha did advocate a healthy skepticism in places like the aforementioned Kalama Sutta and Canki Sutta. But again, the heart of those is testing things out for yourself to see the results.

Whereas the knowledge of science is the physics of the material world, Buddhist knowledge is physics of the inner world of our mind—one that has a very specific purpose, liberation from suffering. Even if one doesn’t believe in or have any experience with some of the more metaphysical aspects like rebirth, one can still put the teachings into practice and see what the results are if they so choose. I don’t know how to tell someone when their subjective experience is ‘valid,’ as I think they’re all valid. But if you mean conform to some objective truth or reality, that’s not something I think anyone can do, which is why the Buddha gives so many guidelines—the most basic being observing the results of our actions and the intentions underlying them.

Then there is the whole issue of my truth, your truth, our shared truth. As you were already indicating with your mention of the cylinder seen as a circle or a square, but this in fact extends to many other areas. Dare I mention Trump and American politics - now there is a man who has mastered the art of appearing to some as a perfect circle while to others he is definitely a square.

It’s a topic worth thinking about, how you discern what is true. I’ve heard it said, what is true is “that which is”. Which means, all of the physical world plus that which you can observe. Where you run into trouble is all the constructs of the mind.

What I have found is that the heart perceives more truly than the consciousness when it comes to perceiving what is true. Trust what you feel, rather than trying to work out what you should think.

From the standpoint of human inquiry, there can be no final frontier.
And I, for one, think that is a good thing.

@Jeroen said:
It’s only an example. Humans can manifest happiness, playfulness, joy. And that may be as good as it gets.

I was in the process of adding an edit when I got the notification that you posted. I was adding something to the effect of having some larger notion of the purpose or value of humanity that they're failing to meet, then yes humans are a sort of obstacle or detriment. I think my previously unexamined motivation is that what humans are for is to have a meaningful, happy life. Lets wish them wellbeing rather than elimination.