Why it cannot be much faster
Light hits the retina, chemistry turns it into a spike, the spike crawls down a nerve at a few dozen metres per second, the cortex decides, the order travels back to the hand, and only then does the muscle start to contract. Almost all of your score is that journey. Only a small part is the decision.
Which is why the honest comparison is not "human versus machine" but "chemistry versus electricity". A signal in copper covers the distance from your eye to your finger before a nerve impulse has left the retina.
Some numbers for scale
- 200–250 ms is a good visual reaction; below 150 ms means the press started before the signal — a guess, not a reaction.
- Sound is faster than sight: reactions to a beep land near 160 ms, which is why sprint starts use a gun and not a lamp.
- In 250 ms light travels 75 000 km — around the equator almost twice.