Reaction Circuits

Metacognition gave you the data log of your thinking. Command terms gave you the vocabulary for it. Reaction circuits are what come out the other side — the "substitute and build new reaction circuits" I promised earlier, and the answer to the "blocks of information" idea from TMUA 101 and How to Prepare.

Blocks of information

A TMUA question isn't one thing. It's a stack of blocks — a constraint here, a functional form there, a domain restriction, a parity, a sign, a boundary condition. Each block makes a specific set of moves available. Most candidates read the question as one undifferentiated wall of words and panic. The 9.0 candidate reads the same question as a list of blocks and asks, for each one: what move does this unlock?

From block to circuit

A reaction circuit is the pre-wired path from a recognised block to the command-term move it triggers:

• Quadratic with negative discriminant → no real roots; factor over the complex numbers if needed.
• Integral with limits flipped → negate.
• Function even on a symmetric interval → halve the integral and double.

You build these through analysis (training), then fire them under timed conditions (pickup games), over and over, until choosing the move disappears. The choice is gone. The move just fires.

How to build one

1. Pick a past-paper question you got wrong.
2. Identify each block of information in the question.
3. For each block, write the move it should have triggered, tagged with its command term.
4. Re-do the question from the blocks alone — not from the answer.
5. Find an analogous question on a different paper. Run the same circuit cold.

After enough reps, your eye skips the "what should I do" question entirely. That's the whole game.

Reaction circuits don't get built in theory. They get built on real questions, run through real analysis, over and over until the response is automatic. For the TMUA, the questions you build them on are the past papers.