How Minds Measure Reality
Discover the hidden math and physics running your senses. Learn why your nervous system measures physical energy in ratios, how to filter signal from noise, and why perception is an exercise in probability.
Like Duolingo, but for How Minds Measure Reality. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 8 levels across 2 sections, about 16 minutes end to end, roughly 3 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Tuning into the Physical World and Calculating Reality. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Minds Measure Reality
- Sensory systems register change as a percentage of the existing stimulus rather than an absolute amount of energy
- A fixed physical input produces a large subjective jump when starting baseline is low
- The same physical input barely registers against a strong existing baseline
- One pound added to a light bag represents a huge proportional shift that sensory receptors readily detect
- One pound added to a 50-pound bag is only a 2% increase, which falls below human sensory detection thresholds
- Sensory weight perception compares the added load to the total load already held
- Weber's law states that the noticeable difference is a constant fraction of the starting stimulus
- Different human senses have different sensitivity ratios (some detect smaller percentage changes than others)
- The necessary difference to notice a shift scales upward as initial intensity grows
- Compressing enormous physical energy ranges into logarithmic sensory steps prevents receptor overload
- Sensory nerves have finite biological firing rates and cannot scale linearly with physical power
- Logarithmic compression preserves fine distinction in low-energy environments while keeping bright environments manageable
- Sensory nerves fire spontaneous, random electrical impulses even when no external stimulus is present
- Perception requires deciding whether an electrical spike is incoming stimulus energy or background neural noise
- Physical environments always contain background ambient fluctuations
- Sensory sensitivity is the physical ability of sensory organs to tell signal apart from noise
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Minds Measure Reality the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
How do your senses measure a change in your environment?
Get it right to open this lesson and 7 more in the app.
Where How Minds Measure Reality takes you
- 1
Tuning into the Physical World
- Sensing Ratios, Not Amounts
- Catching Signals in the Noise
- 2
Calculating Reality
- The Brain's Probability Engine
2 sections · 3 units · 8 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Minds Measure Reality is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Minds Measure Reality today.
Download Tomo, search How Minds Measure Reality, and play your first lesson in under a minute.