Based on how I experienced things when I had the experience that made enlightenment seem within reach, something like a lack of noticeable change is in fact exactly what I would expect from many people who become enlightened.
If this is the case, our experience becomes slightly surprising from an anthropics-ish point of view.
That is, if there are multiple ways to experience the world that are instrumentally the same (like suffering from pain or not), whichever one we happen to have is a random draw. It seems we could have evolved to have any of them with equal probability. The more options there are, the more it would be nice to have a hypothesis that put extra weight in ending up with the experience we have.
Of course, one could bite the bullet and just say “well, we had to end up with one of the possible experiences! we’re just kind of unlucky”. Also one could argue that though the behaviours are the same, this experience is somehow more costly (maybe awareness of the constituents of your experience is just energetically costly) and recover naturality that way
If this is the case, our experience becomes slightly surprising from an anthropics-ish point of view.
That is, if there are multiple ways to experience the world that are instrumentally the same (like suffering from pain or not), whichever one we happen to have is a random draw. It seems we could have evolved to have any of them with equal probability. The more options there are, the more it would be nice to have a hypothesis that put extra weight in ending up with the experience we have.
Of course, one could bite the bullet and just say “well, we had to end up with one of the possible experiences! we’re just kind of unlucky”. Also one could argue that though the behaviours are the same, this experience is somehow more costly (maybe awareness of the constituents of your experience is just energetically costly) and recover naturality that way