A Soils as Health™ Conversation Invite

A Conversation, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, is ‘an oral exchange or discussion of sentiments, observations, opinions or ideas’.  In today’s world, too often exchanges have taken on the equivalent of artillery salvos while many discussions could best be described as storming the palace gates.

This invite is for those who are ready for something completely different; a trifold polyintelligent-induced conversation (Please allow all this to unpack itself as you read on.).  Instead of finding ways to destroy the competition, this invitation allows all who eat into the room. All who enter will have the opportunity to be part of a no-malice exchange, or quietly sit on the sidelines and observe. Enter the Soils as Health™ Convergence portal of getting things done.  

What is so special about the Soils as Health™ conversational portal? Simply, it does not start with what we know, although there will be plenty of time for those pearls of wisdom, but begins with what we don’t know by asking four design questions.  

What do we know?  What don’t we know?  What stands in the way?  What do we need?

Already you may be asking how does this trifold polyintelligent-induced conversation come into play.  Think of this as the convergence of human, machine (AI) and nature-based intelligence.  Like a three-legged stool, each leg has its particular characteristics, but if one loses, or misuses one leg, instability reigns; much like we are witnessing since the onset of the digital age.  We have seen the great strides human intelligence has moved through the millennia.  The recent addition of machine/ digital intelligence is moving us at a never before experienced, mind-blowing pace that brings both fear and excitement.  What is missing? Can it get out of control? Can humanity survive?  And many other questions have surfaced. So what is missing?

Nature-based intelligence is what brings “poly” into the term polyintelligence.  The term poly, means, ‘containing an indefinite number more than one’.  At first glance, polyintelligence would simply mean the totality of human, machine and nature-based intelligence because it’s more than one, according to its definition.  Close…

When we thought all we had was our singular human intelligence available to us, in reality, human intelligence was based upon the complexity of nature-based thinking.  We would observe nature, pull out what we thought we understood and then reformulated the information observed into what we thought was something new.  Being a proud species, 

we have always positioned ourselves as the smartest kids in the room.  There were those who had a sense there was something bigger than ourselves (e.g. Bach, Galileo, Newton) and understood their observations had a complexity well beyond their intelligence.  Because of the great strides in science, math, economics, and more, the past couple of centuries, humanity has placed this nature-based complexity into a box labeled complicated.

We seek to make ourselves as comfortable as possible as we seek to hold our place in the room.  Complicated, defined by Merriam Webster is: consisting of parts intricately combined, difficult to analyze, understand or explain.  If we can figure something out, we pat ourselves on the back and then find ways to monetize our intelligence only because we think we discovered it first.  Complicated thinking assumes a relatively nice clean linear move from one data point to the next. If there is a problem, we have smugly thought we could throw more time, resources and people into the mix, which did seem to work for a time because we assumed we knew the outcome.

Enter machine learning with its big brother AI.  Humans are no longer the smartest kids in the room; we are but participants.  AI, in particular, has brought about two notions (there are more…); one, the world is bigger, faster, stronger, etc than our human thinking can handle, and two (an inconvenient truth), we don’t know the next move. Those nice clean linear lines we thought we had in control have now become balls of frayed string.  We have once again come full circle to having our singular human intelligence exposed; the world is complex, and we have created our models and designs assuming the world is only complicated.

Complexity, as defined by Merriam Webster, is a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts, a group of obviously related units of which the degree and nature of the relationship is imperfectly known. We are again reminded that Nature-based thinking offers the catalyst, free of charge, to the understanding that we need the trifold human, machine (AI) and nature-based intelligence to move us beyond the crumbling leg of complicated thinking. Consider Soils as Health™ as leading us into Food as Medicine™, and more…

This conversation invite is the beginning of that process. There is much unlearning which must come first; let’s call it a triage. 

What do we know?  What don’t we know?  What stands in the way?  What do we need?

If you are interested in such an exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions or ideas, you can start your part conversation by contacting us at conversations@agnetic.com.