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Nerd Cheat Sheets: – The Six Physical Human Senses │- Abstract Math and its Implications

“A rock in space is just a rock — until life appears. Around 3.8 billion years ago, Earth shifted from lifeless stone to living planet, leaving its mark in the crust and altering the chemistry of air and ocean.

To change outcomes, we must first observe, understand the consequences, and then take action that fits the situation. That path begins with how we sense the world.. 

It took evolution billions of years for life forms to actively interact with their world. Primitive life may have had the ability to “see” what was coming before being able to do something about it. The ability to ‘see’ what is coming — and act effectively — marked a major step forward in the survival of the fittest.”.

How Your Mind Turns Senses into Strategy

Most living things rely on their senses to survive—but humans go one step further. We don’t just sense the world; we interpret, compare, and make meaning from it in a more extensive way than any other species on the planet. This chapter explores how that ability evolved—and how we can use it better.

1. The Limits of What We Feel

Think of your body as a machine with six sensors. Each has a range and tolerance. They give you raw data — but never the full picture:

• Sight
• Hearing
• Motion/balance
• Smell
• Taste
• Touch

Extracting meaning from senses — not just data — is what allowed humans to rise above instinct and shape the world around us. Human vs. State of the Art Senses shows how we stack up against the animal kingdom — the results may surprise you.  

The Physiology of the Human Senses discusses the uniquely different wiring of sight and smell to the brain compared to the other four senses. Sight(g), pre-processed into colour images by the eyes, routes directly to the cortex. Smell(j) bypasses the thalamus initially and heads straight to the limbic system.

The Wiring of the Human Brain(m) has consequence to the role that they play in the ways that we perceive the world ~30–50% of cortex is devoted to vision. Hearing takes ~3–4%, somatosensory ~8–10%, and smell <1% (all rough estimates).

Because Smell (j) routes directly through the limbic system, odd odours can hijack mood and memory instantly—pleasant or foul, they shift your demeanour before thought catches up.

We often trust our senses completely, but in reality, they give us just a snapshot of what’s happening at a particular moment. To understand what’s really going on, our brain has to put those snapshots together and add context.

2. Time: The First Abstract Sense

Time is our first abstract sense. No creature sees ‘time’ directly — your brain builds it by stitching together snapshots of change.

Imagine watching a series of snapshots one after another. You can tell whether something is approaching, receding, or accelerating. That’s your brain doing something extra—calculating rate of change from limited sensory input.

This is more than just knowing the time of day. It’s about estimating duration: how fast something is happening, how long something will take, or when to act.

This sense evolved for survival. A predator that’s too slow starves. Prey that reacts too late gets caught. Being able to tell whether something is happening fast or slow, and adjusting accordingly, gives an edge in nearly every situation.

In modern life, this instinctive timing sense still matters. Feeling like something is “taking too long” or “moving too fast” is your brain warning you to pay attention.

3. Comparison without Numbers: Abstract Maths as an Abstract Sense

Abstract mathematics is at work when we subconsciously ask questions like these — and it often feels as if we just know the answer:

• Is this big or small?
• Far or near?
• Loud or quiet?
• Worth it or not?

This is a kind of Abstract Mathematics your brain performs automatically. It’s usually not about numbers—it’s about measuring one thing against another based on past experience.

This mental math helps us make decisions quickly, especially when we don’t have perfect information. It gives us context, and context helps us respond wisely.

The key takeaway? These instinctive evaluations aren’t random—they’re patterns your brain builds over time. The more clearly you understand how you make these comparisons, the more effectively you can use them.

4. Communication: A Shared Survival Tool

A grunt to warn, a gesture to invite, a ritual to bind a tribe — these were the first data links between minds.

At first, communication may have evolved just to help one animal approach another without being seen as a threat—especially during mating. Over time, it became much more.

For humans, communication became the bridge between minds. It allowed us to:

• Share information
• Solve problems together
• Raise children
• Build culture
• Pass down knowledge

When two people share ideas that benefit them both, their collective understanding grows. And when those ideas spread to others, something powerful happens: evolution without DNA. It’s the evolution of thought, language, and shared experience.

Modern implication: Every conversation has the potential to shape reality. Words alone don’t move mountains — but they can inspire, and inspired people do. Clear, respectful communication—especially of useful ideas—is a survival advantage in modern society.

5. Social Rules: Invisible, But Everywhere

As society formed, so did rules—often unspoken ones. Every group you’ve ever been part of, from family to workplace to nation, has a social framework. Most of it isn’t taught in school. But it matters just as much.

Key patterns include:

• Hierarchy: Who leads, who follows—and why.
• Possession: Who owns what—and how we recognize that.
• Security: How the group protects or threatens individuals.
• Ritual: What signals or customs keep things running smoothly.

Being part of a society means navigating these patterns. The more clearly you see them, the more options you have in how to interact with others.

But understanding the system isn’t always enough to avoid conflict. People compete. Power shifts. Strength, weakness, trust, and betrayal are all part of the mix.

Which brings us to a final, uncomfortable truth:
Social systems evolve, but not always fairly. Knowing the rules won’t guarantee survival — but it gives you options. Sometimes, it even lets you change the rules.

6 Reading and Writing: Physical Movements Create Abstract Thought

Throughout my life, I have struggled with reading and writing. At times, this has led people to underestimate me or doubt my credibility. Yet these same skills have also given me some of my greatest successes — and here I am, using them with you now.

The roots of reading are not the words in front of you, but symbols. Think of hieroglyphics or today’s road signs: a stop sign, a sharp bend warning, or the red–amber–green of traffic lights. These signs transmit meaning instantly, almost internationally. Reading and writing are extensions of that symbolic language, refined into systems that let humans share complex ideas across distance and time.

Like spoken language, reading and writing have many “flavours” depending on where you live. Writing is especially fascinating: it combines three senses — sight, motion, and touch. When handwriting, our brain generates a thought, our hand translates it into symbols, and our eyes feedback what has been written. This feedback loop serves two purposes:

• It checks the quality of the writing itself.
• It reinforces the thought in memory, deepening reflection.

Watch a scene in any film where a character writes a letter: they are always looking at the words as they form. Unlike typing, handwriting demands attention to each stroke. That is why the skill of writing is so fundamental in early learning.

Technology has given us keyboards, screens, and voice-to-text, but these cannot fully replace the embodied learning that comes from writing by hand. The act of shaping letters, seeing them appear, and reflecting on them builds pathways in the brain that are essential for literacy and abstract thought.

In Summary: The Invisible Tools That Shape Your World

These abstract senses aren’t mystical. They’re real tools, honed by evolution. And like any tool, they can be sharpened. The better you understand them, the more deliberately you can use them. With practice, they help you make better decisions, react more effectively, communicate more clearly, and navigate social systems with confidence. Once you understand your tools, you can begin to use them with purpose.

Understanding these inner tools can help you:

• Make better decisions
• React more effectively
• Improve communication
• Navigate social systems with clarity

The cheat sheet Abstract Mathematics ends with the following conclusion:

• Keep learning.
  Enhancing your abstract senses takes effort, but the brain’s plasticity (as touched on in Earth History Data) makes it possible.
• Watch and learn from other people.

There is no hardwiring in society to guarantee a good education. But there is also no excuse for not striving to provide your own — right up to your last breath.

Edition 01.01 (02.12.2025)

Back to Topics │ ⇐ Back │ Start: Relativity & Reaction│ Next ⇒
Nerd Cheat Sheets: – The Six Physical Human Senses │- Abstract Math and its Implications

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📖 Series Roadmap

1. Forward: A Little Background
2. Introduction: Action, Reaction, and the Human Paradox (16.09.2025)
3. Looking Back in Time: The Development of the Human Brain (23.09.2025)
4. Abstract Senses: Enhancing the way we see the world outside (30.09.2025)
5. Bias as a Concept & Climbing the Stairs: Pattern Recognition & Everyday Tasks (07.10.2025)
6. Abstract Feelings and Abstract Senses (14.10.2025)
7. Motivation (04.11.2025)
8. The Social Knowledge Base (11.11.2025)
9. Potential (18.11.2025)
10. The Subliminal Way We Go Through Life (26.11.2025)
11. Taking Responsibility (02.12.2025)
12. Fishing for Complements (22.12.2025)
13. Peter and Fermi (22.12.2025)

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