Superman versus the speed of thought

The speed of thought

"Superman faster than the speed of thought?

I got involved in a HUGE argument with somebody over the speed of thought (please check my posts on the “Every human on the planet vs Superman thread”) and basically what it came down to, is the difference between reaction time and the speed of thought.

According to the rules posted, the speed of thought has been measured at a certain velocity, (30 meters per second) but if you read the link posted carefully, the experiment actually concerns physical impulses transmitted via the neural system (in other words reaction time) and not thought. Thought, I am arguing, is not the same thing as a reaction. Reaction is purely physical, a conditioned, instinctive response to a stimulus.

Please, I do not wish to offend anybody, I joined the forum here at KMC because I enjoy arguing and because I enjoy comics, books, movies and philosophy.

I thought about my arguments a lot, and spoke to as many people as possible, and here, essentially, is my argument:

The only way possible, that I can imagine, of measuring the speed of thought, is if you find two telepaths, put them as far apart as possible, get one to think of something, and time how long it takes for the other telepath to pick up the thought.

A friend of mine suggested that alternatively, one can explain an idea to another person, and measure the time it takes for that person to understand that idea, but here, again, we have some difficulties:

Explaining an idea to a moron will take forever.
Explaining an idea to Einstein would take a negative time, because he would have grasped the concept before you finished explaining and probably have taken the idea even further. How many times have you started explaining something to somebody, only to have them complete the thought for you?

But let me emphasise, once again, that the experiments the students were doing had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the speed of thought, even though they might claim so. All they were measuring was reaction time.

If you still doubt me, go to the link, and read it again: His statements are full of "might", "may", "can", in other words, what he is trying to tell you, is he is guessing, because he doesn't know.

Quote: “scholarly pursuits may require a lifetime of thought. For these kinds of activities, other nerve fibers can be used to conduct signals more slowly--70 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) per second."

See what I mean? In the same sentence it is argued that thought takes a lifetime AND that it travels 20 to 30 meters per second. This would seem to invalidate the argument, in my opinion.

Please let me know what you think about my argument,
thank you very much,

Dreampanther

Originally posted by Dreampanther
The speed of thought

"Superman faster than the speed of thought?

I got involved in a HUGE argument with somebody over the speed of thought (please check my posts on the “Every human on the planet vs Superman thread”) and basically what it came down to, is the difference between reaction time and the speed of thought.

According to the rules posted, the speed of thought has been measured at a certain velocity, (30 meters per second) but if you read the link posted carefully, the experiment actually concerns physical impulses transmitted via the neural system (in other words reaction time) and not thought. Thought, I am arguing, is not the same thing as a reaction. Reaction is purely physical, a conditioned, instinctive response to a stimulus.

Please, I do not wish to offend anybody, I joined the forum here at KMC because I enjoy arguing and because I enjoy comics, books, movies and philosophy.

I thought about my arguments a lot, and spoke to as many people as possible, and here, essentially, is my argument:

The only way possible, that I can imagine, of measuring the speed of thought, is if you find two telepaths, put them as far apart as possible, get one to think of something, and time how long it takes for the other telepath to pick up the thought.

A friend of mine suggested that alternatively, one can explain an idea to another person, and measure the time it takes for that person to understand that idea, but here, again, we have some difficulties:

Explaining an idea to a moron will take forever.
Explaining an idea to Einstein would take a negative time, because he would have grasped the concept before you finished explaining and probably have taken the idea even further. How many times have you started explaining something to somebody, only to have them complete the thought for you?

But let me emphasise, once again, that the experiments the students were doing had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the speed of thought, even though they might claim so. All they were measuring was reaction time.

If you still doubt me, go to the link, and read it again: His statements are full of "might", "may", "can", in other words, what he is trying to tell you, is he is guessing, because he doesn't know.

Quote: “scholarly pursuits may require a lifetime of thought. For these kinds of activities, other nerve fibers can be used to conduct signals more slowly--70 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) per second."

See what I mean? In the same sentence it is argued that thought takes a lifetime AND that it travels 20 to 30 meters per second. This would seem to invalidate the argument, in my opinion.

Please let me know what you think about my argument,
thank you very much,

Dreampanther

Excatly, that is what I thought. I also got in some arguments against others in other forum months ago. I told them that reaction of time is what is here. I don't care, we can't react faster than speed of light, if somethin attack us at speed of light, we are done, but speed of light is not faster than speed of thougt, how can it be. I mean, logiclly, give some speed of light and give me limitles tranportian, transmision to go anywhere where I want with thought, and we find out that speed of thought is limiltellsy faster and speed of though is impossible to measure and it's limitelss, here were experimetns on reaction.

Are you trying to define "consciousness" with words?
It doesn't work, no one really knows what it is.

But, I do know what you are saying.

But why does any of this matter?

Because people are arguing that Superman is faster than the speed of thought. Now, while I think Superman is awesome, I do think that this is overstating his abilities somewhat.

And the problem is, because the rules say the speed of thought has been measured at 30 meters per second, people are using that to substantiate their arguments

"Thought" is more of a concept than a true science. It's impossible to unbiasedly judge thought unless you are void of it.

In comics, there have been times when magic users have actually entered peoples brains/minds and saw little "Though capsules" as they were being formed and was able to go faster than them.

Superman wins.

I have no idea how to measure the speed of thought. More than likely, there is no way to measure it with exact certainty. However, a human's speed of thought is not limitless and I know Superman is faster than any non powered human's thought.

Try getting a book and open it to page one. Then, flip through the pages. Flip through the pages so fast that it only takes approximately two seconds to finish the book. Do it again and try reading the book at the same time you are flipping through the pages. Its impossible. No matter how hard somebody focuses, its impossible. The pages are moving too fast for you. Someone would be lucky if they recognized a couple of words in the book. There's no way that they think fast enough to see the words, comprehend them, and effectively read the story.

Superman attacking you would be a great deal harder to see and comprehend than trying to read a book at super speed.

In Superman Red Sun, he stated he was faster than thought. And that was a powered down nazi version.

Yeah, even I've seen Superman tackle a woman before her brain could process the sight of him busting into her hideout, and I very rarely read Superman. Whatever the speed of thought is in real life, in the DCU, it's slower than Superman.

someone here posted a link here saying that the speed of thought was 170 miles per hour. they provided a link of scientists doing expirements and such to prove it. i didn't go to the link, but is this really true? it just seems kinda slow for the speed of thought.

Superman if fast er than the speed of reaction or reflex.
Reaction is the response to stimuli, not how fast the brain thinks.

"Try getting a book and open it to page one. Then, flip through the pages. Flip through the pages so fast that it only takes approximately two seconds to finish the book. Do it again and try reading the book at the same time you are flipping through the pages. Its impossible. No matter how hard somebody focuses, its impossible. The pages are moving too fast for you. Someone would be lucky if they recognized a couple of words in the book. There's no way that they think fast enough to see the words, comprehend them, and effectively read the story."

Okay, This is true of the conscious mind,but the brain is also being overloaded with multiple stimuli at once, so this argument is bogus.
Hell, if that's the case then I could argue that the sub-consious brain would pick up just about all the info from the book...Because it would.

What we are getting at is the speed of thought, while there is no exact number.
We can estimate or use an educated(reasonable guess) to come up with a decent answer/sensible.

That 30 m/s crap is a piece of shit balony.
It is stupid for someone to actually think that.
It is even more stupid for someone to with a straight face use it in an intelligent discussion, such as this.

Superman is as fast as the speed of light(186,000 miles a second ).
The speed of thought is suggested(reasonably) to be near-instantaneous.
We know that the thought impulses travel through the brain at phenomenal speeds.

What people are arguing is that reaction time is thought.
Reaction time in most normal humans is said to be about 0.1-0.2 seconds. Since the nerve impulses are about 100 m/s.
The reflexes are possible are 100 mph or more when actually put to limb movement like jerking back from a hot stove(on pure reflex speed alone).

However, this is a conscious movement of the body. The brain's electronic pulses actually work much faster than the conscious awareness of the human body can pick up on and react to.

Which means that your sub-conscious mind is much much much much much faster than you can pick up on.
That is why your sub-concious mind can pick up subliminal stuff while your conscious mind doesn't even know what is going on.

To put it in simple terms, the experiment was wrong, even the response time should have been way faster, unless they were using retarded people, third and finally, reaction time is not the same as speed of thought.

Its simply the speed at which you can react to a situation, your subconscious portion of your brain is assessing information way faster than the rest of your brain can pick up and send to the nerves impulses that cause your reaction to stimuli.

Quite frankly, I believe that the "real" speed of thought to be near-instantaneous.

As for the conscious speed of reaction(0.1-0.2 seconds)
superman is much faster than this.
True.

My I.Q. was tested several times and I am 130 so I pretty much am no
run-in-the-mill- dumbass.

Thank you all for participating, I highly appreciate your contributions. Thanks especially to jplatinum, for a well-thought out, clear and rational argument.

To all those who tried to substantiate their arguments by quoting from a comic book - I would rather not comment.

My final thought on the subject - consider the phenomenon of savants.

Just, THINK about it. Try not to let a comic book writer do your thinking for you. And try not to confuse reality with fantasy.

We all enjoy fantasy, that is why we are here. But that is all it is - fantasy.

Reaction time is actually slower than the speed of thought, due to chemical messengers invloved like acetyl choline which are secreted and broken down much slower than axons are depolarised.

Glad I could help, nothing is left to say except supes system is super and his responses are far faster than a humans, hence "super speed" and superman.

Originally posted by Whirlysplatt
Reaction time is actually slower than the speed of thought, due to chemical messengers invloved like acetyl choline which are secreted and broken down much slower than axons are depolarised.

Glad I could help, nothing is left to say except supes system is super and his responses are far faster than a humans, hence "super speed" and superman.

Only 130 😆