Nerd Cheat Sheet Hub

Quick-reference tools for deeper thinking

Why a Cheat Sheet?

Each Nerd Cheat Sheet distils the key detail from a chapter of Relativity and Reaction into a compact, structured reference. All follow the same framework:

Observation — the data and facts we can measure.
Consequence — what those facts mean for survival, society, or thinking.
Action — how to apply or respond to those consequences.

They’re like decision tables for life, much as an engineer or project manager might use in practice.

Looking Back in Time

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Earth History Data
How catastrophe shaped our brains.

Observation: Milestones in life’s development on earth and catastrophic resets.
Consequence: Rapid human brain evolution built on the primate framework, driven by a sharp increase in brain mass with similar cortex cells.
Action: Adapt deliberately — use your flexible brain design to meet modern challenges.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Brain Functionality
Reflex speed vs. reasoning depth.

Observation: Old brain vs. cortex — reflex vs. reasoning.
Consequence: Reflexes give speed, but bias and misfire are inevitable.
Action: Pause to know when reflex is enough — and when to think instead.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Food for Thought
Energy as the currency of thought.

Observation: Where the energy we gain from food is invested.
Consequence: The energy consumed by the brain reflects the kind of life an animal leads and where cognition is critical.
Action: Choose inputs that fuel both body and thought.

Abstract Senses

Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Six Physical Human Senses
Why vision dominates your reality.

Observation: How vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and motion compare across the animal kingdom.
Consequence: Humans aren’t sensory champions, but wiring and colour preprocessing give us efficiency.
Action: Trust your cortex to correct reflexes when the old brain misfires.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Abstract Math and Its Implications
The first abstract toolset.

Observation: Humans developed ways to compare, count, and abstract beyond raw senses.
Consequence: Abstract senses (time, ratio, language) extend survival strategies.
Action: Use abstract tools to test assumptions instead of relying on instinct alone.

System Bias as a Concept & Climbing the Stairs

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Pattern Recognition
Underlines why vision dominates your reality.

Observation: Almost advanced automated interpretation of the world with little thought
Consequence: Mechanical Bias is a good thing but it can be misled
Action: Improve when to “be in the moment” reduces risks and mistakes

Abstract Feelings and Abstract Senses

Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Chemical Limitation of the Cortex
Emotion and the mechanisms of the cortex and the limbic system and growing up.

Observation: What takes place and where
Consequence: Getting ready for action with cortex limbic system
Action: Growing up we learn good and bad habits but is never to late to strengthen or change.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Development of the Mind
Our minds grow with with us while growing including the values we hold dear.

Observation: The shaping of our abstract mind can lead to reproducible error
Consequence: The fast methods of system 1 are fallible but it does eliminate there value
Action: Our emotional intelligence will define how we are and how we are seen.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: To Bias or not to be Biased
Engineering bias is a reasonable and its human nature form is often overlooked

Observation: Looking to the sources and methods that help us develop our minds
Consequence: Our personal experiences and how we accept them shape our abstract mind
Action: Our emotional intelligence will define how we are and how we are seen.

Motivation

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Security In Numbers
The drives and consequences of living in groups.

Observation: Factors influencing group behaviour and dynamics.
Consequence: The lingering impact of our evolutionary legacy—traits that once ensured survival can now destabilize modern societies.
Action: For a stable society, our arguments must be persuasive, not manipulative.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Seven Deadly Sins – Internal vs External
Across history, certain emotional drives have repeatedly caused personal and social imbalance

Observation: Emotional drives, when unchecked, distort both perception and behaviour.
Consequence: Negative emotions have roots—pride signals insecurity; greed signals fear; envy signals perceived unfairness.
Action: Recognize the emotion before the label—translate feeling into information, not judgement.

The Social Knowledge Base

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Poor Decisions by Society
The drives and consequences of living in groups.

Observation: Homo sapiens dominate because of the SKB.
Consequence: But the same mechanisms that make it powerful also make it predictably fallible
Action: Mitigate these fallacies, require we review and verify observations, asking whether our values are reasonable

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Finding the definition of Potential
Clarity is power. Knowing what a word means—and how its meaning shifts across the Social Knowledge Base (SKB)—sharpens focus and avoids confusion.

Observation: The meaning you get depends on who you ask, which source you trust, and the cultural logic behind it.
Consequence: This mirrors Poor Decisions by Society: the SKB is multi-faced, and definitions aren’t universal.
Action: When precision matters, cross-check the definition. A few minutes of clarity can prevent hours of misguided effort

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Exploring Relativity
Perspective changes everything. Looking at an issue from different angles reveals what is signal and what is noise.

Observation: Our real influence flows through our social circle—about 150 people (the Dunbar number). That’s the natural human bandwidth.
Consequence: Your most meaningful impact isn’t global. It’s local. It’s with the people you speak to, support, challenge, or inspire.
Action: Don’t judge your effectiveness by whether it reaches the evening news. Judge it by whether it strengthens your circle. That alone is enough.

The Subliminal Way We Go Through Life

Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Fabric of Society
Clarity is power. Knowing what a word means—and how its meaning shifts across the Social Knowledge Base (SKB)—sharpens focus and avoids confusion.

Observation: Observing where power sits in a hierarchy gives us a starting point.
Consequence: Understanding how control works helps us see why systems behave as they do
Action: Adjusting our approach accordingly—rather than fighting blindly against the structure—can lead to better outcomes

The Taking Responsibility

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Observation Consequence and Action
Using a logical structure helps us analyze problems more effectively — and communicate more clearly.

Observation: Describe what is happening in a way most people can agree on — facts without interpretation.
Consequence: Consider what those observations mean. This separates what is from what we think about it.
Action: Once we understand the situation and its likely outcomes, we can choose effective action and clarify who must take it.

Nerd Cheat Sheet: World Scaling
Viewing globalization through Observation → Consequence → Action exposes how scale reshapes society.

Observation: Automation and global redistribution of labor shift where people earn money and where money is spent.
Consequence: Wealth concentrates where commercial knowledge and digital infrastructure reside, reducing broad economic distribution.
Action: Commerce must invest in education and acknowledge accountability for the large-scale impact it creates. Capitalism isn’t broken — but it needs responsible modernization

Fishing for complements

Nerd Cheat Sheet: Money — It’s a Gas
Money and success are not the same thing.
Meaning is found in purpose; applying talent should reap reasonable reward.

Observation: A hard-working individual provides a useful benchmark for relative wealth.
Consequence: A tenfold reward appears reasonable—
until we realise that one person cannot consume the output of ten households in a tribe.
Action: Once the situation and its likely outcomes are understood, effective action becomes possible—and responsibility can be clearly assigned

How to Use This Hub

Observation: Homo sapiens dominate because of the SKB.

Consequence: But the same mechanisms that make it powerful also make it predictably fallible

Browse freely — each sheet stands alone.
Cross-link — “See also” links let you hop between related sheets.
Anchor back to chapters — cheat sheets are not summaries; they’re the reference layer behind the main argument.

Why “Nerd”?

Because the details matter. These aren’t distractions from the story — they’re the wiring diagrams behind the story. And if you’re the kind of reader who enjoys seeing how things actually work, you’re in the right place.

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