Mat

Reason

Humans are infected with diseases of the mind described by different religions in different ways. These diseases keep us separate from a more perfect way of life and maybe even more perfect beings waiting to meet us. Stopping thought is one way to rid yourself of that disease, and that allows you access to the better way of life. Reason is a method for taking diseased thoughts and transmuting them into something more healthy.

It’s as if we have an ability to take in a virus, transmute it into a therapy, and spit it back out. Compared to other methods like emptying the mind through a focused meditation, doing the work through reason is more difficult and prone to failure, especially when there is no good feedback and error correction mechanism. The upside is that you may be able to bring people to the desired end state in today’s society more quickly than with the other methods. This may also be the mechanism behind LLMs’ ability to end suffering on a mass scale. Reasoning is required but so is a very good feedback and correction mechanism.

We are still left with the difficult question of what to do about people who have a lesser ability to reason though. Something using machine learning and interfacing more directly with lower levels of consciousness through our five senses may be required. But that should be avoided if possible since we don’t understand the brain well yet. That would be a more invasive surgery. And beyond that there is literal invasive surgery with brain computer interfaces. The more invasive the method, the more risk is involved and the more potential for coercion and abuse there is.