Conservation from the Mind

pauljacquin7
5 days ago
2 min read

“Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.” A misquote from Mark Twain

Following Conservation from the Heart, we move to the next layer.

The mind.

Judgement in an Automated World

An op-ed by Julien Bek at Sequoia Capital—the investment firm behind Apple, Google, NVIDIA, as well as Airbnb and WhatsApp—has been making the headlines in tech circles.

His thesis is straightforward: AI will value judgement over intelligence.

Coding, accounting, legal—many of the skills once considered “highly trained”—are increasingly assisted, or even replaced, by AI. We are moving from copilots to autopilots.

In that world, intelligence becomes table stakes. Judgement is what differentiates.

As Bek puts it: “Knowing what to build next is judgement.”

Experience: The Non-Scalable Edge

That shift to judgement, however, demands something less scalable.

Experience.

Expertise.

Instinct.

For most of us—especially Gen X and before ;-)—experience is what anchors decision-making. Having seen a situation before, we recognise patterns. The odds tilt away from a coin toss.

For younger generations, this creates a paradox. Knowledge has never been more accessible. Everyone carries a library in their pocket—YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, ChatGPT.

And yet, the opportunity to apply that knowledge remains scarce.

Youth unemployment in Southern Africa sits around ~50%. The issue is not access to information. It is access to experience.

As Albert Einstein put it: “Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.”

A Jack-of-All-Trades Discipline

In conservation, people quickly realise they need to be a jack of all trades.

Without drifting into the extremes of Jackson’s Farm (recently added to my watchlist), the combination of common sense and experience is not easy to build.

We are all shaped by our environment.

Left to my own devices, I would naturally lean toward “machines” (as Jeremy Clarkson might say), systems, and automation. On the ground, however, rocks, binding wire, and pliers are better at getting the job done.

Faster.

Simpler.

Good enough.

Operational realities.

Our Judgement: Active Restoration

Our philosophy has always been to pursue active restoration—a holistic approach focused on biodiversity and the recovery of natural ecosystems.

That is how we set our agenda.

That is how we allocate resources.

There is value in preservation. We chose restoration. Which, admittedly, is the slightly more complicated route.

The foundation of active restoration is relatively simple (on paper):

Start with soil health—and pull the thread. Soil → water → vegetation → fauna → climate interactions.

This means:

selecting native plant species
restoring soil microbial life
reintroducing animals (springbok volunteers still welcome—20+ spots open)
working with natural succession rather than against it

The goal is a self-sustaining ecosystem requiring minimal human intervention over time.

We are, of course, in the early innings. So, our judgement is still in beta testing.

But early signals matter:

pioneer species returning
wildlife reappearing
bees back at work
and, perhaps most telling, Francois slightly more upbeat (a reliable ecological indicator, I am told)

From Judgement to Measurement

We do not always get it right. But we iterate. And improve.

That said, judgement without feedback is just opinion. So while this journey is shaped by instinct and experience, it will ultimately be measured. With data.

Which brings us to the final piece of the trilogy.

Up next: Conservation from Data.