The Multivariable Reality: Why Intelligence is Parallel, Not Unified

The brain is not a processor. It is an orchestra.
I want to propose an analogy. In multivariable calculus, the same problem yields different answers depending on how you expand the equation. Cartesian coordinates. Polar coordinates. Spherical. Each is valid. Each reveals something the others obscure. None is complete.
Reality is like this.
We have been debating whether intelligence is “one modality” or “many modalities”—whether the brain processes a unified reality or separate channels of vision, sound, and touch. But this is a false dichotomy. The brain does neither. It does both. It does something more sophisticated.
The Parallel Orchestration
The brain is not a unified processor grinding through a single stream of reality. It is Broadmann’s areas operating in parallel—visual cortex, auditory cortex, somatosensory regions, associative areas—each handling a different “expansion” of the same underlying reality.
When you drive, your visual cortex is not “merging” with your auditory cortex. They are operating simultaneously, in tandem, each processing their own coordinate system of the problem. The unity you experience is not the input. It is the emergent output of parallel processing.
This is crucial. The intelligence is not in the unification. It is not in the separation. It is in the orchestration—the simultaneous, parallel processing with emergent coordination.
The Coordinate System Problem
Current AI architectures force reality into single coordinate systems. World models try to compress everything into geometric space. Vision models force everything into pixel classification. Language models force everything into token sequences.
Each is valid. Each is incomplete.
The multivariable calculus insight is that we can choose our parameterization. For some problems, Cartesian coordinates simplify beautifully. For others, polar coordinates reveal structure that Cartesian obscures. The skill is not in committing to one coordinate system. It is in knowing which expansion to apply.
This is what agentic systems enable.
An agentic architecture can maintain parallel state machines: one tracking visual input, one tracking temporal patterns, one tracking physical constraints, one tracking social protocols. These operate in tandem—not sequentially fused, but orchestrated. Like Broadmann’s areas.
When a human driver approaches an intersection, they are not fusing “vision” and “sound” and “memory.” They are running parallel expansions: visual geometry of the scene, temporal prediction of traffic flow, physical intuition of braking distances, social protocol of right-of-way. Each is a different coordinate system of the same underlying reality.
The skill of driving is not processing any one of these. It is orchestrating all of them simultaneously.
Why Agentic Systems Mirror Intelligence
This is why agentic systems succeed where monolithic models struggle. A large language model attempts to force all intelligence through the coordinate system of language. A vision model forces everything through pixels. Each is a valid expansion. Each misses what the others capture.
An agentic system allows multiple coordinate systems to coexist: deterministic state machines for protocol, memory architectures for experience, constraint checkers for physics, pattern recognizers for prediction. They run in parallel. They influence each other. But they are not “fused” into a single processing stream.
The orchestration is the intelligence.
The Architecture of Choice
The engineering implication is profound. We are not building systems that “see” or “hear” or “remember.” We are building architectures that can choose the right expansion of reality for the problem at hand.
Some problems yield to visual-geometry coordinate systems. Others yield to temporal-sequential expansions. Others yield to state-machine determinism. The intelligent system is not the one that commits to one coordinate system—the “pure vision” approach, the “pure language” approach—but the one that can orchestrate multiple parallel expansions.
This mirrors the brain. Broadmann’s areas are not “modules” to be fused. They are parallel processors, each with their own coordinate system, each contributing to the emergent understanding.
The Skill of Orchestration
When we say humans have “skills,” this is what we mean. A skilled driver is not someone with better vision. They are someone who has learned to orchestrate the parallel expansions: to weight the visual coordinate system heavily in fog, to trust the temporal prediction system in heavy traffic, to let the physical intuition system override when something “feels wrong.”
The skill is knowing which coordinate system to trust when.
Agentic systems can embody this. They can maintain explicit state machines for different expansions. They can have “meta” protocols that decide which agent’s output to weight in which context. They can learn from experience not by updating a single massive weight matrix, but by refining the orchestration—the rules of engagement between parallel processes.
Conclusion: The Parallel Path
The future of artificial intelligence is not the unified mind. It is the orchestrated chorus.
We have been seduced by the idea of a single, coherent intelligence—one model, one architecture, one coordinate system to rule them all. But this is not how intelligence works. Not in brains. Not in the mathematics of multivariable calculus. Not in reality.
Intelligence is parallel expansion. It is maintaining multiple valid coordinate systems simultaneously. It is letting the visual cortex do its geometry while the temporal cortex does its prediction while the memory system does its pattern-matching—and trusting the emergent coordination to yield the right action.
Agentic systems give us this architecture. They allow us to build not one superintelligence, but a society of intelligences—each with its own coordinate system, each its own expansion of reality, orchestrated by protocols that mirror the brain’s parallel wisdom.
We do not need to solve intelligence. We need to orchestrate it.
The orchestra is already tuned. The musicians are ready. The intelligence is in the conducting.