A higher-order human capacity for judgment that integrates practical reason, moral discernment, and reflective self-awareness across time and consequence. Sapient decision-makers hold multiple time-scales, weigh qualitative stakes alongside quantitative metrics, and discern when optimization must yield to wisdom. It is not intelligence as processing power, wisdom as accumulated experience, or emotional intelligence as self-regulation, but the ability that integrates and directs all forms of intelligence. In HDI, sapience is the capacity from which genuine governance emerges: the governance of what matters across institutions, generations, and the full complexity of human life.
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