My friend Allegra Huston at Imaginative Storm is doing brilliant work on imaginative intelligence with her collaborator James Nave HERE, sprung out of conversations such as this one dated October 8, 2024 HERE. They describe imaginative intelligence using OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a concrete model for the more intricate human imagination. The pair discovered that a way to train an imagination that has gone dormant bears similarities to the way we train AI. Note this piece was written nearly 1 ½ years ago, and if you read Allegra’s Substack posts, [LINK] you will see the marvelous evolution of this body of work week after week.
It is her most recent post on February 18, 2026 HERE that got me thinking about the mapping of intelligences. She writes:
The functions of what I identify as imaginative intelligence are largely based in the right hemisphere of the brain, while rational intelligence is largely based in the left hemisphere. Inspired by the Flat Earther who started me on this train of thought, I will compare my map to the globe, with its two continental hemispheres and a lot of water sloshing about in between. The continental masses represent intelligences, arranged in two contiguous chunks. The oceans represent all the brain functions that don’t partake of intelligence, which is the ability to acquire information, assimilate it, and utilize it.
This reference to continental masses and maps reminds me of the hiking I enjoy with my husband. When I say “hike,” I mean treks in the mountains where trails are sometimes unmarked and missteps can be costly. In this scenario, we can see both rational and imaginative intelligences at work.
If I call rational intelligence “knowledge” and imaginative intelligence “experience,” then when we hike we use our knowledge as a “map” to explore the “terrain.” Knowledge tells us where the cliff is. My husband never leaves the trailhead without his AllTrails app and a pre-trip study of the trail map. Experience teaches us how the wind feels when we stand near the cliff’s edge.
Knowledge alone can stall us. We keep researching, planning, optimizing, and circling the plan. We look at our maps until we are cross-eyed, but we never get out in the terrain to experience what we are analyzing. Motion feels riskier than thinking, and we think until we are 100% certain. Certainty becomes the prerequisite for action, so action never happens.
There were times when I pored over trail maps, watching the fear build inside me. Despite the map (or because of it), I had qualms about clambering over this section of boulders or climbing that steep ravine. Standing at the trailhead (with urging from my husband and reassurances that we can turn back any time), I imagined the view from the top. I experienced the fresh smell of pine and the breeze coming up from the valley. The sunlight peeking over the horizon.
As Allegra describes it, this was my rational intelligence getting “stuck” FIND IT HERE (November 4, 2024), which made “space for [my] imaginative intelligence to rearrange the information in a new, creative way.” In my case, the terrain overruled the map long enough for me to act, strap into my hiking poles and set out on the trail. I drew in not only the sensory experiences, but the nostalgia of decades of hiking, and the intuitive knowing that the hike would be fun.
Maps are not fun. They are practical, tidy, and safe. Terrain is fun. Terrain carries sensation and surprise. It offers a visceral and delightful challenge to mind and body. A puzzle like picking your way down a mountain or through a stream bed.
How do you pick your way down a mountain? The map shows the route. It may show contours so I can see changes in elevation. Downloaded on top of that hard data are all my prior hiking adventures. My rational brain sifts through the memories, searching for pictures and patterns. Similarities in pitch, weather, smooth or rocky trail, sunny or shaded. All these and many more pieces of data run through my mind as I evaluate each section we climb down.
But there’s something else. There is information I do not know that affects my choices about which route to take, how long to stay on top of the mountain, and when to rest. It is the place where knowing ends, but we still need more information to tackle the situation before us. Where do we get that information?
We have to generate it for ourselves. As Allegra writes in her November 4, 2024 piece, “it [the imaginative intelligence] creates patterns and images and insights out of this vast range of material at lightning speed.” Instantaneously, we all have access to enriched information, if we allow it to have its say.
Taking an Alaskan hike as an example, I didn’t know if the grizzly who was seen earlier that week competing for a sow along our trail in Denali National Park (true story) was still pining for her. He could be anywhere in the 6 million acre park. I imagined we could run into him. (My rational husband already picked up the bear spray). I didn’t know if there would be snow at the higher elevations or how windy it might get. I imagined it could be slippery enough to slide off the trail. Or windy enough at the top to blow me off the trail. And from these imaginings came beaucoup scenarios. Especially about bear attacks, my #1 fear. I didn’t know any of these things because I had not experienced them. But by generating creative ideas (sometimes grim), I ended up with more information than was available in the trail brochure and the AllTrails app. And in hiking through, some of these events (not the grizzly) transformed from imagination to rational intelligence. So by physically navigating through the terrain, I added detail to my map. Perhaps some of the imaginative intelligence crosses over into rational intelligence, allowing space for the imagination to expand? And more importantly, perhaps the rational side of our being learns over time to trust our imagination to take the reins for a while, knowing it could be the beneficiary of new knowledge.
Some may say, “Alice, you’re hiking in bear country. You should have known there could be a grizzly on the trail.” It is one thing to have the data about bear populations (knowledge) and another to imagine how you might respond to an encounter (experience). We cannot learn how we will respond to a bear attack any more than we can know how we would respond to a loved one’s death, serious illness, or divorce. Or to happier events like getting married or giving birth. These lessons are experiential. There are no explanations that substitute for the lived sensation. Ask any new mother. They are embodied. The knowledge lands in bones and muscles and nerves, not in maps and models and ideas.
The best part of going where the knowing ends is that the rules stop ruling. The voices go quiet. There is only attention. Exquisite attention, making room for vulnerability. Clarity. Listening. Responsiveness instead of reactivity.
Imagine that…
Love, Alice
** Allegra Huston is speaking at the TEDx Asheville event Friday, March 20, 2026, 10:00 am-4:00 pm local time. For tickets and event details, go here https://tedxasheville.com/
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