Part 5: What Makes Me Different From a Robot?
- Miranda Holder
- Aug 24
- 2 min read
When my son Lachlan is upset, I feel it immediately, as though our nervous systems are braided together.
Every parent knows this choreography: his cortisol surges, mine follows, and in an instant I am no longer responding to the moment, but to the chemical echo inside my own body.
Lately, the stage for this dance has been his diablo toy – a deceptively simple contraption of two slender sticks, a taut string, and a spinning spool he learned to master at circus camp.
He loves the rhythm of it, the way the motion builds into something almost mesmerizing.
Yet when the string slips or unknots, the rhythm collapses, and frustration erupts in a cry that instantly spikes my stress response.
In that moment, I have to summon every bit of awareness to pause, breathe, and regulate myself before I can guide him back to calm.
What unfolds between us is not weakness or loss of control, but the deeply human reality of chemical intelligence at work.
From the beginning of this series, the unspoken fear has been: what if robots take over our jobs? Machines can already calculate faster, store more, and execute without pause. Surely they will outpace us.
But this is what I know to be true: our cognition is not clean code, it is chemistry.
Here’s what the science shows about chemical intelligence:
Context-Sensitive Processing. Oxytocin and cortisol shift your brain in real time, building trust and openness with loved ones, or sharpening focus under stress.
Embodied Memory. Cortisol “tags” emotional events so they stick. Fear etches danger, joy makes delight unforgettable.
Social Coordination. Oxytocin syncs your body with others, spreading calm or stress and enabling collective intelligence.
Intuitive Decisions. Your gut produces neurotransmitters that guide choices faster than conscious thought.
Motivation & Meaning. Dopamine and endorphins don’t just feel good; they reinforce what helps you thrive.
AI will never experience the rise of cortisol when your child cries, nor the rush of oxytocin that makes you soften when a loved one walks into the room. It will never feel its own state transformed simply because another being is near.
What seems “messy” in us (hormones, microbes, moods) is the very thing that makes us irreplaceable. Our biology is not an obstacle to intelligence but its highest expression: relational, contextual, adaptive, and alive.
So as this series comes to a close, I want to leave you with this: robots may mimic the output of our minds, but they cannot replicate the chemistry of our humanity.
What makes you different from a robot is not your efficiency or your logic. It is the aliveness in your body. The way your cells, your hormones, your very breath conspire to sense, adapt, and connect.
This is the work I do with my clients: learning to trust your embodied intelligence, so the choices you make are not just clever strategies on paper, but decisions that feel resonant, and unmistakably yours.
If you’re curious how to build that kind of embodied intelligence into your own life and career, I’d love to support you.
Miranda, thank you, thank you, thank you! I am going to walk with this in my heart....AI will never experience the rise of cortisol when your child cries, nor the rush of oxytocin that makes you soften when a loved one walks into the room. It will never feel its own state transformed simply because another being is near. and THIS...What seems “messy” in us (hormones, microbes, moods) is the very thing that makes us irreplaceable. Our biology is not an obstacle to intelligence but its highest expression: relational, contextual, adaptive, and alive. I promise to footnote you in my next sermon 😀! Thank you for this profound and vital contribution to the understanding of what it means…