Research Program / Claims / condensed-time-5
An inverted time system is closer to the nature of time; the past, present, and future exist in the spacious present, and individual consciousness uses momentum.
倒置时间系统更接近时间本质，过去现在未来存在于广大当下，个体意识运用动量。
Concept condensed time · Domain Nonlinear Time and Self-Cognition · mechanism · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable
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
To address Additional Question 3: First construct three models—forward Bayesian filtering, post-observation information integration, and reverse-order evidence accumulation—and complete parameter recovery, model recovery, and identifiability analyses. Approximately 240 participants would complete a probabilistic decision task orthogonally manipulating evidence order, temporal priors, and speed–accuracy requirements, with approximately 800 trials and two EEG visits per participant. Compare choices, reaction-time distributions, and predefined CNV measures using held-out prediction, over 12–18 months. If the claim is that future random outcomes influence earlier responses, recruit a separate sample of approximately 1,000 participants and generate outcomes only after response records have been locked, testing the effect using timestamps from independent devices and cross-laboratory replication. Ordinary reverse playback cannot adjudicate backward causation.
Suggested paper title
Forward and Retrospective Bayesian Models of Temporal Decisions: A Pre-registered EEG Comparison
What it would overturn
Only a stable influence of future random events on previously locked records would challenge the causal assumption that “subsequently generated random events are conditionally independent of earlier responses.”
Candidate labs / funders
Mehrdad Jazayeri，Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Michael N. Shadlen，Columbia University; Leendert van Maanen，Utrecht University
Specificity of Seth's formulation
The “spacious present” and “consciousness uses momentum” have no equations or units and therefore cannot directly yield predictions about CNV direction, reaction-time differences, or additional predictions beyond existing models.
Note
No direct test was found that translates this specific claim into an identifiable computational model. Bayesian retrospective inference uses later information to update judgments; it does not imply that later events alter the past.
Evidence (2, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim condensed-time-5, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/condensed-time-5