You didn’t answer my question:
What is dearer to you—the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, or common sense?

Amen and amen.

Honored returnee to religious observance, why does it seem to you that the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, conflicts with common sense? On the contrary—where there is a contradiction, apparently (perhaps) that is not exactly the “will of the Holy One, blessed be He”…?

I don’t answer questions that have no meaning, and/or foolish sermons like the one you posted here. If you want to discuss a concrete question, please go ahead and raise a specific question here (a question, not sermons and not slogans).

Okay, maybe I was too aggressive.
My question is:
On what basis do you found your claim that it’s important to act according to reason? After all, it is explicit in countless sources that the most important thing is doing commandments, not wisdom or things of that sort.
I want to understand what the Rabbi’s religious approach is based on.

This isn’t a question of aggressiveness at all, but of content. I have no problem at all with aggressive or cynical speech, so long as it has concrete content that can be addressed. Otherwise it’s just venting steam and wasting time.
As for your question, see Sha’arei Yosher by Rabbi Shimon Shkop, Gate 5, chapter 2, where he writes the following:

And although at first glance this seems puzzling—what necessity and obligation can there be upon a person to do something without the Torah’s command or warning? But when we examine the matter carefully, this can be understood. For the obligation and necessity of serving God and fulfilling His will, may He be blessed, is also itself an obligation and necessity according to the judgment of reason and recognition. Likewise, monetary obligation and financial liability are legal obligations, incurred through the mechanisms of acquisition, or imposed by the Torah, as in damages, redemption of the firstborn son, and the like; and for this we require that one acquire and merit this right.

And as is known, throughout all of Gate 5 this is the thread running through his words.
Meaning: reason stands above everything in the world, for even commitment to the word of God and the Torah is based on reason. And when there is an explicit command that contradicts reason, we fulfill it because reason says that the Holy One, blessed be He, probably knows better than we do—and not because reason is set aside in the face of the command. Think carefully about that.
But usually we are not talking about explicit commands, rather about interpretations of sages, and here reason has the right of firstborn. For if reason contradicts that interpretation, then apparently that is not the correct interpretation.

But as I said, a general discussion like this is not productive. If you want to continue the discussion, please raise a specific question and we can discuss it. Aggressively too, if you like. 🙂

In order to accept the Rabbi’s words, we would need to assume:
A. That there is no intuition in favor of the justice of classical traditionalism—which is almost never the case, as in Ben-Gurion’s famous joke about which synagogue he doesn’t go to. This intuition exists among many people, if not everyone. If so, that returnee to religious observance is really asking whether the Rabbi doesn’t feel this. “What is dearer to you, the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, or common sense?”—that is, the battle between the intuition that this is the Creator’s will and a cold weapon, namely reason.
B. If we assume that God knows better than we do, then we have assumed that we can err. (It makes no sense to say that a human being makes mistakes only in relation to divine judgment. It’s just that there the Rabbi is forced to admit error, and it necessarily becomes evident.) If so, then it is certainly possible that the Sages were right and we were wrong. To begin from the viewpoint that I am right until proven otherwise, all the time, suffers from a cognitive error. Does the Rabbi know any human being who never made a mistake? I’m sure the Rabbi could even bring an explanation for this from statistics. Compare the term “requires further study,” used by the best Talmudic analysts. True, I do not know why the common default is to follow the earlier authorities, but I do not see greater justification in the second possibility. In short: “For if reason contradicts that interpretation, then apparently that is not the correct interpretation”—all the same, there are many kinds of reason, so why follow yours?
C. “And when there is an explicit command that contradicts reason, we fulfill it because reason says that the Holy One, blessed be He, probably knows better than we do, and not because reason is set aside in the face of the command.” I will presume to refute this sentence, despite the fact that the Rabbi sealed it with “think carefully about that.” To the extent that the service of God is based rationally, when there is rational opposition to the service of God, the foundation of His service falls away—that is, there is rational opposition to accepting His service in the first place. Rabbi Shimon Shkop adds that even acceptance of monetary law itself is based on reason. But these words do not refer to the details of the service after one has accepted the yoke. I understand from my own reason that I should honor my father, and therefore I will honor him even in actions that run contrary to reason, so long as the rational basis for honoring him remains.

Rabbi Shimon Shkop of blessed memory says in this passage that at the foundation of serving God, may He be blessed, is something rational, and that is certainly correct, because the Holy One, blessed be He, would not command belief in something foolish and lacking logic.
But according to my understanding of the Rabbi’s approach, if reason leads a student to heresy there is nothing bad in that, and even though this runs contrary to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, we are still supposed to allow it—and that is what is puzzling to me. In these matters there are many ways to reach the Holy One, blessed be He, but according to accepted thinking the ways (common sense or simple faith are means) and fear and awe of the Holy One, blessed be He, are the goal. And according to my understanding, in your approach you have written several times that you respect a clever heretic more than a foolish believer, and to me that is very puzzling… For according to the sources, in the end the goal is what matters, not the means. (A great example of this is the term “righteous among the nations,” which leads to a share in the World to Come, and not a philosophical sage who invested effort and investigated and as a result keeps the seven commandments—even though I heard in the name of Rabbi Kook of blessed memory that sages have a World to Come of their own. But in any case there is no disputing that among the nations the level of a simple pious person who believes in the seven commandments is the highest and best—and where is the proof from a philosopher? After all, he is forbidden to study Torah, and he is supposed to accept the faith, כביכול, through simple intuition.)
What I mean plainly is that perhaps faith arising from cold reason and logic alone may indeed be the highest level—but even there reason is a means and not a goal in itself. As is explicitly written, a person weak in faith should not enter into the study of heretical books and the like, because it may damage his faith.
In short, the main thing that bothers me is that the Rabbi places common sense and logic as a goal in itself and not only as a means. And maybe for a person with an intellect like yours, who is exposed to all kinds of arguments and still continues to keep commandments, the method is suitable—but for the masses these things are not appropriate, and therefore throughout the exile and even today, the guidance for a simple believing person, an ignoramus, is to cling to the guidance of the sages.
My question to the Rabbi, simply after this introduction: wouldn’t it be preferable, as jarring as this may sound to him, “from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He,” to keep people innocent and not objective, with little knowledge, and nevertheless have them come out righteous because that is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He—and leave the philosophers and all the over-cleverness to the great ones? (And in the end it is for their own good too, because after 80 years they receive reward!)

It is explicitly written, known* and fear and awe of the Holy One, blessed be He* and where is the proof from a philosopher?*
Sorry for the spelling mistakes in that message; I corrected them.

In these matters there are many ways to reach the Holy One, blessed be He.*

Foolish and lacking logic.*
Those are all the spelling corrections.

This is not a question of bad and good. Someone who denies the Holy One, blessed be He, is mistaken, but that is his view. What am I supposed to tell him? That even though his conclusion is that there is no God, he must decide that there is? How can one demand that of him? He thinks אחרת, and even if he were to utter exalted words of faith day and night, that would change nothing. If you convince him that this is the truth, then he will believe. But again, that is only because he became convinced.
I have already written here more than once that it is impossible to define authority regarding facts. Search here or in the second book of my trilogy (only if you have a strong heart). These things have already been discussed thoroughly.

The question is not whether it’s possible to force a heretic to believe (even though it is known that according to one approach, denial of the Holy One, blessed be He, and of the Torah is not at all an intellectual position but stems only from animal desires, and then the best path is not to convince with arguments but to pluck the strings of his soul, using the method of connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, that suits him—as written at the end of the book Chesed LeAvraham of blessed memory, that the names of all the Jewish people are engraved within the Torah, and for this one the interpretation of Torah according to the attribute of kindness is suitable, and for that one according to the attribute of judgment, for this one the interpretation of the world of physical action, and for that one the interpretation of the spiritual world. Perhaps the best way is to look into the soul of the doubting heretic and understand from which root-element his soul and name were drawn).
But that introduction is not the point: even if there are heretics whom from the outset we would not even try to persuade, why encourage free thought, which causes the Holy One, blessed be He—and in the end the person himself as well—pain, rather than educating that the masses should be given only what they need to know? Or briefly, and I am asking completely seriously: why, in the Rabbi’s opinion, are free thought and speaking the truth so important? Why does he think specifically that the Haredi approach of censorship, blocking information, and a bit of bluffing the public here and there—is not the ideal?

That is exactly the question. If a person, according to the best of his understanding, reaches the conclusion that there is no God, then he is a heretic. You are suggesting hiding data and arguments from him so that he will not reach the conclusion that is true from his perspective. Then he is a heretic in disguise. In my eyes there is not much value to his faith. Faith has value when it comes on the basis of a person’s true and full decision, not when he has been programmed and trained for it.
If you could hypnotize people into serving God meticulously, would you do it? There is such an option—why don’t you use it?
Thought (and thought exists only as free thought) is the most fundamental basis for serving God. And that is exactly what Rabbi Shimon Shkop writes.