Research Program / Claims / artificial-guilt-10

The scientific error lies in excluding the individual's intentions, purposes, and desires, viewing people as gene-determined machines, and the value of the 'moment of reflection' should be acknowledged.

科学错误在于排除个体的意向、目的和欲望，将人视为基因决定机器，应承认“反省的一刻”的价值。

Concept artificial guilt · Domain Belief Dynamics and Mind–Body Regulation · methodological suggestion · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status contradicted

This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.

Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
For supplementary question 5, approximately 360 adults with persistent excessive self-blame are randomized to 6 weeks of responsibility-calibrating counterfactual reappraisal training, matched-contact supportive intervention, or structured factual recall, with follow-up at 3 and 6 months, over 18-24 months. The primary endpoint is blinded, event-specific guilt and self-blame; secondary endpoints include functioning, rumination, and genuine compensatory behavior; use intention-to-treat analysis and pre-registered mediation models to distinguish the training itself from treatment expectancy, attention, and general mood improvement.
Suggested paper title
Counterfactual Reappraisal for Persistent Excessive Guilt: A Preregistered Randomized Controlled Trial
What it would overturn
If reflective intervention is effective, it will not overturn mainstream science; at most, it will revise the specific null hypothesis that 'after controlling for treatment expectancy and general support, responsibility-calibrating counterfactual training has no additional benefit.'
Candidate labs / funders
Sonya B. Norman，加利福尼亚大学圣迭戈分校及美国 Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD; Roland Zahn，伦敦国王学院 Centre for Affective Disorders; Felipe De Brigard，杜克大学 Imagination and Modal Cognition Lab
Specificity of Seth's formulation
Acknowledging the value of intention and reflection is consistent with existing cognitive and social psychology; the original text does not specify which type of reflection, what dosage, or which people benefit, so predictive precision is low.
Note
contradicted applies to the factual generalization that modern science excludes intention and views people uniformly as gene-determined machines, not a denial of the reflective suggestion; existing multi-component treatments being effective does not mean standalone counterfactual training is confirmed, and upward counterfactuals sometimes worsen self-blame.
Evidence (2, DOI-verified via Crossref)

Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim artificial-guilt-10, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/artificial-guilt-10