As a runner, I have often imagined what it would be like to have super speed like the Flash or Quicksilver. Unfortunately for my super speed dreams, Kyle Hill has presented the fatal flaws of super speed. But while Hill did consider the problem of perception, he seems to have missed one practical problem with being a super speedster and that is how mentally exhausting (and boring) running a super speed could be. Kant can help explain this problem.

Our good dead friend Kant argued that time is not a thing that exists in the world, rather it is a form in which objects appear to us. It is for him, the “form of inner sense” because our mental events must occur in temporal sequence. Or, rather, must occur to us in that way. He does bring up a very interesting point, namely that other beings could experience time differently than humans. For example, God might experience all time simultaneously.  If God does this, it can account for both omniscience and free will: God knows what you will do because from his perspective you done did it, are doing it, and will do it. Other beings might have a similar inner sense, but with a different perceived speed. This takes us to speedsters.

While humans can operate fast moving vehicles like jets and rockets using our merely human perceptions, a super speedster would need to perceive the world and make decisions at super speed. Consider a simple comparison. With adequate training, I could pilot a plane going 500 mph. But imagine that I could run 500 mph, but my brain operated normally. If I tried to run a winding trail in the woods, for example, I would slam into trees because my running speed would vastly exceed my ability to perceive the trail and decide when to turn. But if my mental processes were also fast, then I would be able to run “normally” on the trail: from my perspective, I would have plenty of time to make decisions and avoid collisions. My “form of inner sense” would match up with my movement speed, so I would be fine. Mostly. But there would be a problem if I wanted to use my super speed to save on travel expenses.

Suppose I wanted to visit my family in Maine. My sister’s house is about 1500 miles from my house in Florida. If I could run 500 mph, I could be there in three hours. Being an experienced marathoner, I know that running for three hours is no big deal for me and it would be well worth it to save the cost and annoyance of flying. But travelling in this way would be more complicated than just running for three hours. For people watching me and by my watch, it would be three hours of running. But remember, my mind would be significantly sped up to enable it to handle my physical speed.

To keep the math simple, suppose my normal human running speed is 10 mph. So, my super speed would be fifty times that (500 mph). Suppose that my perception and decision-making speed was equally increased. While this might seem amazing, it would entail that from my perspective the three-hour run would take 150 hours (6.25 days). Even ignoring concerns about sleep and endurance, that would be an extremely unpleasant run. After all, I would experience it as if I were running there at normal human speed (although other people and things would seem to be moving very slowly). For me, it would not be worth it to spend 150 (mental) hours running even if it saved me the price of a plane ticket. After all, I could do that now—and I do not.

One could, of course, tweak the numbers a bit. Perhaps I could safely run at 500 mph while my mind operated at slower than 50 times normal speed. But it would still need to operate much faster than normal, otherwise I would keep running into things and doing a lot of damage. So, super speed would generally not be great for long distance travel.

One could, of course, do some comic book stuff and come up with workarounds to avoid the boredom problem. Perhaps a speedster would have multiple levels of awareness—a fast navigating subconscious awareness that guides them safely and a slower conscious mind to avoid the boredom. Going back to Kant, this would involve having two different forms of inner sense operating in the same mind, which is obviously not even very weird in philosophical terms. In that case, super speed would be a great way to travel.