As Yuri Zelikov said, it is not technically possible to reduce the confirmation time. One can build tools that assume the transfer of BTC will complete in the future. Visa already does this for multiple currencies approximately 172,800,000 times per day (Stress Test Prepares VisaNet for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year). read more
As you mentioned - the shorter the block time - the higher the ratio of orphaned blocks. So, yeah in theory one can run a bitcoin fork with 1 second blocks - and this can function. However, 1 second is not really enough time to allow a fair game for all miners. read more
It may be in time that people start trusting transactions with 4 or 5 confirmations, or maybe they're get more cautious and start waiting for 10 confirmations. But that's nothing to do with the Bitcoin network - that's just people and their perception of risk vs. reward. read more