Speed of thought

[BaronOfHell]

In comic strip 948 the negative energy spirit inside Durkon's mind explains how going through Durkon's memories happens at the speed of thought, hence the OotS won't notice a time lag when communicating with the vampire.
I assume this is only the case for one memory at a time, otherwise I would think the spirit would have already absorbed all of Durkon's memories.

It is not the first time I have met the notion, speed of thought. When I was a little child I also once read a comic about the northern gods where a boy had to compete in a race against an opponent who could move at the speed of thought. The boy lost every race. Back then I actually believed the speed of thought to be almost instantaneous.

I personally have a tendency to get stuck in thoughts for a long time about various of things, and when I afterwards try to go through each thing and consider how much time I was thinking, then to me it seems like my speed of thought is extremely slow. For me going through memories can easy take an hour or more, despite it only being about very few activities.

But I don't know if I am simply very slow, and if I actually were faster when I was younger or it was always like this. That is why I'd like to know if your speed of thought has changed with time, and if you feel it is slow, fast or maybe even instantaneous?

PS: I was very unsure if this belonged in the OotS forum or the friendly banter forum since the question isn't really so much about the speed of thought in OotS, but it was the strip that made me think about it again.

[factotum]

It stands to reason that the speed of thought is faster than anything you can do in the physical world, because doing physical things requires messages to be sent to and from your limbs. I believe the speed of this communication is about 400mph, so that's a few milliseconds for the signals to travel from the brain. (This is why the main organs of sense--the eyes and ears--are on the head, because it reduces propagation delays and gives more time for your brain to figure out what to do in response to a stimulus). In OotS, though, it seems clear that "thinking" is not something that requires any physical presence at all--Roy was still able to think while in the afterlife, after all--so we're well into the realms of metaphysics here.

[ORione]

Picture the surface of the sun.

Your thoughts are now at the sun, and it took them about a second to get there. That's over 8 minutes faster than it takes light to get there, and light is supposedly the fastest thing there is.

[Shulk]

Thought is theoretically faster than light, but going through a dream or a memory? Time can't really be... measured properly. It might seem like a dream goes on for weeks but it was only an hour or two when your cat woke you up, or it could seem to be a few seconds to a minute in a dream and you could wake up the next morning, 10 hours later.

Thought's speed is extremely relative, and it's usually not applied due to how the speed of APPLYING thought is restrained by signals through the body, reactions, the time it takes for what you say to speak your voice comes out, and other factors. Thought's speed is... Well... Let's just say it's "Ohgodwhathavewestarted"(inconsistant-yeahnowecan'tcalculatethis)²+ "Why are we bothering with this"

Seriously. Thought technically isnt at a defined speed due to not really traveling, save for signals across short distances

[Kish]

I think Greg could absorb all Durkon's memories in less than one real-time second.

I think Greg will not do so because, from his subjective perspective, that would be spending an amount of time equal to Durkon's entire life doing nothing but watch the events of Durkon's entire life. And he's already made it clear on multiple occasions that he finds everything in Durkon's life either boring or enraging. So he calls up memories as he specifically needs them.

[Fyraltari]

I think Greg could absorb all Durkon's memories in less than one real-time second.

I think Greg will not do so because, from his subjective perspective, that would be spending an amount of time equal to Durkon's entire life doing nothing but watch the events of Durkon's entire life. And he's already made it clear on multiple occasions that he finds everything in Durkon's life either boring or enraging. So he calls up memories as he specifically needs them.

My headcannon is that this is precisely what the three-day delay before rising is normally used to do.

[factotum]

I think Greg will not do so because, from his subjective perspective, that would be spending an amount of time equal to Durkon's entire life doing nothing but watch the events of Durkon's entire life. And he's already made it clear on multiple occasions that he finds everything in Durkon's life either boring or enraging. So he calls up memories as he specifically needs them.

But on the other hand, Durkula has actually stated in the comic that the sooner Durkon begins his eternal slumber, the better, and since that can only happen once he's absorbed all of his memories, you'd think he'd be quite happy to do that?

[Synesthesy]

I think Greg could absorb all Durkon's memories in less than one real-time second.

I think Greg will not do so because, from his subjective perspective, that would be spending an amount of time equal to Durkon's entire life doing nothing but watch the events of Durkon's entire life. And he's already made it clear on multiple occasions that he finds everything in Durkon's life either boring or enraging. So he calls up memories as he specifically needs them.

But if I were Hel, I would have ordered him to watch everything, just to be sure not to miss anything important.
I think that while watching single memories doesn't need time, watching a lot of them needs some time. And Durkon has a role in watching memories, as Durkula said that he'll need to speak with him until he has watched everything at least once. And that Durkon tried to fight against the vampire, trying not to give him, for example, Roy's name.

[BaronOfHell]

That is definitely an interesting idea Kish, which I think is likely to be true.

But on the other hand, Durkula has actually stated in the comic that the sooner Durkon begins his eternal slumber, the better, and since that can only happen once he's absorbed all of his memories, you'd think he'd be quite happy to do that?

I imagine in the end it comes down to the same, the spirit has to look through the memories at some point, but doing it in one round or during many doesn't make any difference for him since the total amount of Durkon's memories won't change, I think.

[Keltest]

Greg has specifically said the memory absorption process normally takes a few weeks, implying that he couldn't force the memories to come beyond a specific rate unless Durkon voluntarily shared them.

[GloatingSwine]

Picture the surface of the sun.

Your thoughts are now at the sun, and it took them about a second to get there. That's over 8 minutes faster than it takes light to get there, and light is supposedly the fastest thing there is.

Your thoughts are probably at a special effect from Star Trek, because nobody has ever pictured the surface of the actual sun in a way compatible with human visual imagination.

Anyway, the "speed of thought" is not a uniform property because it depends on the type of thought. Reactions to an anticipated stimulus can be very quick, ~150 milliseconds, but decisions are considerably slower and the more complex and the larger the number of factors involved the slower they get.

However, the comic is also based on D&D where you get unlimited* "thinking time" before having to choose what to do, so the "speed of thought" in a D&D universe is functionally infinite.


* Or at least until the other people at the table start throwing dice at you.

[PopeLinus1]

Maybe speed of thought is like, how a player can usually take as much time as they want to think up a strategy. I don’t know, but I guess it would stand to reason.

[Kish]

has actually stated in the comic that the sooner Durkon begins his eternal slumber, the better, and since that can only happen once he's absorbed all of his memories, you'd think he'd be quite happy to do that?

So whenever you have an unpleasant task you need to get done at some point, you always do it immediately with no breaks, however long* it takes?

*Subjective time--which, again, I'd estimate as something over sixty years--being what matters here.

[Shulk]

Picture the surface of the sun.

Your thoughts are now at the sun, and it took them about a second to get there. That's over 8 minutes faster than it takes light to get there, and light is supposedly the fastest thing there is.

Also, to counter the quote, It's a mental image of the sun with relitively zero distance due to being thought, and not real light, and it still takes a moment to picture it. The real sun is 8 light minutes away, and if you actually look at the sun you see light from 8 minutes ago, aproximately due to the distance and speed, so thoughts aren't exactly that fast

[martianmister]

Speed of thought is really really fast. It's just that Durkon's lifetime of memories is too long. That's why it takes few weeks to accomplish.

[BaronOfHell]

Speed of thought is really really fast. It's just that Durkon's lifetime of memories is too long. That's why it takes few weeks to accomplish.

I suppose we could actually calculate an estimate of how fast it is, if a year is 52 weeks, and Durkon is 60 years old.

If a few weeks is 2 weeks, then it is a factor of ~1500, and if a few weeks is 3 weeks, then it is a factor of ~1000 so approximately each 15-25 minutes inside the mind, going through memories at the speed of thought would be 1 second in the "real" world.

Makes me wonder if Roy, when he was in the afterlife in his intangible form, also experienced everything in the afterlife at the speed of thought, meaning he didn't spend months there, but centuries (from his point of view). Though that is very unlikely, I guess.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Makes me wonder if Roy, when he was in the afterlife in his intangible form, also experienced everything in the afterlife at the speed of thought, meaning he didn't spend months there, but centuries (from his point of view). Though that is very unlikely, I guess.

Unlikely - the Evil adventurers he helped his grandad quarter were moving at the same speed they were.

GW

[Shulk]

We might be disregarding the potential of this whole speed of thought thing being vampire durkon lying out of his metaphorical ass to try to make durkon give up or demoralize him in the struggle in the mind

[Grey_Wolf_c]

We might be disregarding the potential of this whole speed of thought thing being vampire durkon lying out of his metaphorical ass to try to make durkon give up or demoralize him in the struggle in the mind

Durkon can tell how fast Greg goes through one of his memories in proportion to the real-life time spent, since this moment. Greg can't lie to him about how long it will take to go through all the memories, because Durkon can tell for himself.

GW

[Devils_Advocate]

I've thought about starting a thread on this subject in the Medium Discussions forum, because this is a recurring thing in various stories that has long struck me as odd.

I can accept that we can think faster under some circumstances, such as while dreaming, but this lighting-fast "speed of thought" is often referred to as though it were the general rule, which... Huh?! I have no ability to put the world on pause at will and spend massive quantities of subjective time thinking about things. Is that actually a common superpower? And if it isn't, then why do works of fiction talk about it like it is?

In this case: Unless Durkon has that superpower, then being inside his mind is by itself insufficient to do anything SUPA FAST, so saying "We're inside your mind, which means that everything that happens in here happens at the speed of thought" implies that Durkon indeed has that superpower (as "the speed of thought" is here implied to be SUPA FAST). Does that come standard with high Wisdom or something?

Picture the surface of the sun.

Your thoughts are now at the sun

No, they're of the sun. That doesn't alter their location.

I think Greg could absorb all Durkon's memories in less than one real-time second.

I think Greg will not do so because, from his subjective perspective, that would be spending an amount of time equal to Durkon's entire life doing nothing but watch the events of Durkon's entire life. And he's already made it clear on multiple occasions that he finds everything in Durkon's life either boring or enraging. So he calls up memories as he specifically needs them.

But on the other hand, Durkula has actually stated in the comic that the sooner Durkon begins his eternal slumber, the better, and since that can only happen once he's absorbed all of his memories, you'd think he'd be quite happy to do that?

I assume that he wants it to be over and done with in no small part because he doesn't want to do it. Once it's over, then he finally won't have to do it anymore! But, while hard work might pay off tomorrow, procrastination always pays off right now.

[Doctor West]

Your thoughts are probably at a special effect from Star Trek, because nobody has ever pictured the surface of the actual sun in a way compatible with human visual imagination.

Or Space Battleship Yamato, in honor of your avatar. They did actually have to skim the surface of a star at one point after all.

[Riftwolf]

But on the other hand, Durkula has actually stated in the comic that the sooner Durkon begins his eternal slumber, the better, and since that can only happen once he's absorbed all of his memories, you'd think he'd be quite happy to do that?

My thoughts on this: Durkon* thinks he doesn't need to watch the lot, because Durkons life has been inherently boring and irrelevant, and only searches for specific information when he needs it. Those searches will be far fewer now he's not attempting to fool the Order.
My guess is Durkon* won't make the connection between Durkon and Hilgya, thinking that Durkon reliving the memory is another attempt to disgust him with biology.

[Jay R]

Speed is distance divided by time, and is therefore about a change in physical location. Thought is non-physical. When I think about the surface of the sun, nothing travels the distance from me to the sun.

To put it another way, my mind travels to the surface of the sun, or even to the Andromeda galaxy, in the same amount of time in which it reaches the next room. So "speed" does not apply.

The phrase "speed of thought refers to how long it takes to reach a specified conclusion, and has nothing whatever to do with any locations considered in the process of reaching that conclusion.

[Vinyadan]

I think Greg could absorb all Durkon's memories in less than one real-time second.

I think Greg will not do so because, from his subjective perspective, that would be spending an amount of time equal to Durkon's entire life doing nothing but watch the events of Durkon's entire life. And he's already made it clear on multiple occasions that he finds everything in Durkon's life either boring or enraging. So he calls up memories as he specifically needs them.

I like this, it makes sense. The other option is that he can watch at the speed of thought, but he cannot perfectly learn as fast.

[oonker]

My headcannon is that this is precisely what the three-day delay before rising is normally used to do.

That's a very nice explanation to the 3 days nights wait.

[RatElemental]

Speed is distance divided by time, and is therefore about a change in physical location. Thought is non-physical. When I think about the surface of the sun, nothing travels the distance from me to the sun.

To put it another way, my mind travels to the surface of the sun, or even to the Andromeda galaxy, in the same amount of time in which it reaches the next room. So "speed" does not apply.

The phrase "speed of thought refers to how long it takes to reach a specified conclusion, and has nothing whatever to do with any locations considered in the process of reaching that conclusion.

Debatable that thought is nonphysical, but the closest we could get to a concrete 'speed of thought' would be to measure how fast impulses travel along nerves I think.

[factotum]

Debatable that thought is nonphysical

In the case of OotS we know for a fact it's nonphysical--Roy certainly wasn't thinking with his decaying brain and nerves when he was in the afterlife, after all.

[Vinyadan]

In the case of OotS we know for a fact it's nonphysical--Roy certainly wasn't thinking with his decaying brain and nerves when he was in the afterlife, after all.

Yet, at the same time, Elan is dumb, because he got hit in the head too many times as a kid...

[Kish]

I think that's putting too much weight on a joke from the first hundred strips. If Elan was truly and seriously supposed to have brain damage, he should have regained his lost Intelligence and stopped acting goofy the first time Heal got cast on him; depending on interpretation, one of the lesser healing spells might have done it as well.

[137beth]

Greg has specifically said the memory absorption process normally takes a few weeks, implying that he couldn't force the memories to come beyond a specific rate unless Durkon voluntarily shared them.

I think this is the answer. HPoH might be able to absorb memories somewhat faster than he is, but it isn't instantaneous.