<p>I was staring blankly at my desk thinking about how to overcome a programming task at work when it suddenly dawned on me I had spent the best part of half an hour trying to envision how this problem could be solved. This got me thinking, why is it thoughts have to take a non-zero length of time to occur? What is the process in the mind that causes it to be slow, almost as if I were to be speaking the thoughts aloud? Is our thought process just wildly inefficient? </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-21T14:43:33.387Z
This seems like an awkwardly conceptualized question to me because it appears you are equating nonzero length of time with slow.  Why would you expect a thought process or series of thoughts to take no time?
Krysta
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-21T17:56:45.353Z
According to a popular theory in cognitive psychology called Dual Process Theory, there are at least 2 systems or types of "thinking" - fast and slow.  Fast thinking does happen nearly instantaneously - arguably the vast majority of decision-making that one does in a day uses this system.  You may be asking about slow thinking, in which case I would recommend adjusting the question accordingly.
Arnon Weinberg
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-22T15:53:39.007Z
There are other ways to think, some of which are strikingly fast, compared to what you are describing. The term "noetic" or "noesis" describes this fast, high processing capacity thinking
Alex Stone
<thought>
Why do thoughts take a non-zero length of time?
James T
# Why do thoughts take a non-zero length of time?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-07-21)

I was staring blankly at my desk thinking about how to overcome a programming task at work when it suddenly dawned on me I had spent the best part of half an hour trying to envision how this problem could be solved. This got me thinking, why is it thoughts have to take a non-zero length of time to occur? What is the process in the mind that causes it to be slow, almost as if I were to be speaking the thoughts aloud? Is our thought process just wildly inefficient?

**Tags:** thought

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: This seems like an awkwardly conceptualized question to me because it appears you are equating nonzero length of time with slow.  Why would you expect a thought process or series of thoughts to take no time?  
> **username_2**: According to a popular theory in cognitive psychology called Dual Process Theory, there are at least 2 systems or types of "thinking" - fast and slow.  Fast thinking does happen nearly instantaneously - arguably the vast majority of decision-making that one does in a day uses this system.  You may be asking about slow thinking, in which case I would recommend adjusting the question accordingly.  
> **username_3**: There are other ways to think, some of which are strikingly fast, compared to what you are describing. The term "noetic" or "noesis" describes this fast, high processing capacity thinking  

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