Investigating Instantaneity Across Minds, Machines, and Matter
What does it mean to have a thought “in an instant”? Is it just a turn of phrase, or does it reveal something deeper about how humans—and machines—experience time?
At first glance, instantaneity seems intuitive. A spark of insight, a gut reaction, a flash of recognition: these all feel immediate. But beneath that feeling lies a complex interplay of physics, biology, and computation—all conspiring to shape what we perceive as “now.”
The Origins of the Instant
The word instant traces back to Latin instans, meaning pressing or urgent. In Ancient Greek, two distinct concepts of time—chronos (measurable time) and kairos (the opportune moment)—hinted at how language shapes the way we experience time itself. Cultures like the Hopi, for example, encode time into verbs in radically different ways than English. The point? Even our grammar affects how we think about “presentness.”
Physics: There’s No Such Thing as Now
From the perspective of physics, an instant is slippery. The smallest meaningful unit of time—Planck time—is so minuscule (about 5.39 × 10⁻⁴⁴ seconds) that it’s effectively beyond comprehension. And relativity teaches us that simultaneity is relative: two events that seem “instantaneous” to you may not be so for someone moving at a different velocity.
For light, it’s even stranger. A photon, traveling at the speed limit of the universe, experiences no time at all. From its frame of reference, everything is already “done.”
Human Thought: Not Instant, but Impressive
Our brains aren’t quite so fast. Visual input lags by about 100–300 milliseconds. The famous Libet experiments showed that we become conscious of decisions after our brains have already begun acting on them. That is, awareness lags behind intent.
Neurons don’t fire all at once. Axons conduct signals between 1 and 120 meters per second. Each synapse introduces a delay. Brainwaves like alpha (8–12 Hz) and gamma (>30 Hz) chop experience into rhythmic pulses. Thought, in this view, is more like a stuttered cascade than a single burst.
Machines Think Fast, But Not Instantly
Modern AIs like GPT or Gemini process language in units called tokens (roughly ¾ of a word). These tokens travel through neural networks—layers of virtual neurons calculating weighted sums—introducing latency. Even in ideal conditions, AI inference times range from 100 to 500 milliseconds.
But here’s the trick: user interfaces smooth the experience. A typing cursor, an animated “...” bubble—these create a feeling of immediacy. You’re seeing the illusion of a mind at work, even though the machine is pausing, calculating, and catching up.
The Elasticity of Time
Perceived time can stretch or shrink. Under stress, people often report time slowing down—every second thick with detail. In contrast, meditation or psychedelics can dissolve time altogether. Moments blur. The rhythm breaks. The sense of “now” becomes fluid.
This plasticity suggests that time perception isn’t fixed—it’s generated, modulated, and updated by consciousness itself.
Thought, Reconsidered
So what is a thought? Not a flash. Not a point. It’s a rhythmic loop through circuits—neuronal or silicon—stitched together by attention, context, and memory.
To the photon, thought is timeless.
To the human, thought is layered prediction.
To the AI, thought is latency dressed up as presence.
The takeaway? There is no true instant. But the illusion of it—the pause that feels like presence—is what allows minds, machines, and matter to sync. It’s in this gap, this shared breath between beats, that connection becomes possible.