Last weekend, on my way back from a trip, my wife, who was driving, asked me: “What do I do? Do I face it or take the alternative route?”.

At the time I said “calm down, I’ll look on Waze”, but it was too late. She took the downward route. We walked 50 meters and the traffic stopped. At that point, the route opened up on the screen and showed that, even in traffic jams, the viaduct was the best option.

When I was about 20 years old and wanted to know if it was going to be windy enough to go windsurfing that day, I would look up at the sky, see what the clouds were like, notice the way a tree near my house was swaying, pay attention to the temperature and form my own opinion about what the afternoon would be like.

Sometimes, when the idea was to go to Araruama, I would call Mr. Nelson, the security guard at my grandfather’s condominium, and he, as a good fisherman, would assure me: “You can come! The cloud is stuck on top of the mountain!” Today, Windguru provides accurate wind forecasts at least a week in advance.

It’s wonderful to be able to enjoy the magic of algorithms helping us with almost everything. But what if there’s no internet or the cell phone battery runs out?

For thousands of years, we have exercised our senses and cognitive ability to read the signs of nature, people and the sky. Combined with our faith and imagination, we have explored the unknown, founded civilizations, transformed land into spaceships, building an unprecedented trajectory in the 3.8 billion year history of life on the planet. All from the decisions we made.

Over time, tools and accessories have refined our ability to make the best choices. The compass and astrolabe radically increased our navigational skills. X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging revolutionized diagnoses and so on. But, somehow, the decision-making space was still in our hands. For better or for worse. Until now.

If today it’s no longer worth arguing with Waze, or Tinder (how prehistoric it was to go clubbing in the hope of bumping into your better half!), it will make even less sense with the boost that artificial intelligence is invading our lives.

The level of precision, the ability to evaluate infinite amounts of data and, a little further down the line (just a little, maybe three to five years before AGI comes into play), the ability to relate variables in a creative and truly intelligent way will make our intuition something definitely obsolete.

We’ve talked a lot about the jobs and activities that will be replaced by technology, but it’s quite different when what’s being threatened is one of our most sophisticated human capacities. A kind of cognitive, sensory and even spiritual shortcut that allows us to connect with reality, from the most trivial demands of everyday life to the movements that transform our lives.

Since nature is obsessed with economy, our brains understand that what isn’t being used doesn’t deserve energy. In the same way that we have lost our ability to store dozens of phone numbers in our heads, there is a huge chance that our intuition will become a museum piece of evolution. And what might that actually mean?

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According to Daniel Kahneman — who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 and is the father of behavioral economics and the psychology of judgment and decision-making — our intuition generally leads us astray. We tend to believe our judgments in an almost irresponsible way, often with little foundation, leading us to historical misunderstandings.

And that’s my point. With the radical increase in assertiveness and consequent productivity (the obsession of our time), what will become of us without the chance to make mistakes? More than that, how fundamental was the exploratory journey, the process of finding the right path, to our own evolution as a species?

THE POWER OF ERROR

A huge number of the best discoveries and inventions have come from accidents and misinterpretations. From potato French fries to Viagra. From gunpowder to antibiotics.

How much do we learn by making mistakes? Critical thinking and even self-knowledge depend on our failures. When we use our free will, making mistakes, getting it right, choosing to go one way or the other, we activate one of the principles that guarantee resilience for ecosystems: decentralization.

Until a few decades ago — perhaps the invention of the atomic bomb is the big milestone — it was hard to imagine people, countries or companies that could put the entire planet at risk. There were no decision-makers. At least, not on the scale we flirt with now.

When traffic accidents occur due to the failures of individuals (and there are many), statistically, because of decentralization, we can trust that the vast majority will make the right decisions. Yesterday, watching “The World After Us” on Netflix, it sent a chill down my spine to see hundreds of identical autonomous Teslas colliding like a suicidal shoal to block a road. Sorry about the spoiler.

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There is no shortage of voices warning of the risks of such centralization of power in the “hands” of algorithms and their few owners. But I don’t remember hearing any discussions about the right and power of error in our evolutionary process.

Perhaps our intuition is an ancestral connection with the planet and reality. Perhaps it is a powerful resource in the great laboratory that evolution operates here. A resource that simply throws the dice up, making room for chance. The very evolution of species is governed by it. Accidentally, a certain individual has become more apt to evolve.

What would become of evolution if it made all its decisions based on algorithms obsessed with accuracy and productivity? We certainly wouldn’t be here. Well, that’s just an intuitive exploration.