Research Program / Claims / time-8
At the physical level, time and space are equivalent to each other and are related to the motion of CU (conscious units).
在物理层面,时间与空间互为等价,且与CU(意识单位)的运动有关。
Concept 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
Corresponding to Question 2: Approximately 300 individuals undergo simultaneous EEG-fMRI twice, with intervals of 2–4 weeks; each session includes 15 minutes of resting state, temporal bisection and reproduction tasks, and collects reports of time passage and mind-wandering. Pre-registered measures include default mode network connectivity, BOLD fluctuation time scales, EEG microstate durations and transition rates, with control for head motion, respiration, heart rate, and drowsiness, and independent held-out prediction. The project lasts 12–18 months. This design tests the relationship between neural dynamics and subjective time; the CU hypothesis must first independently specify frequency, localization, and intervention responses before it can participate in model comparison.
Suggested paper title
Resting-State Network Dynamics and Individual Differences in Subjective Time: A Multimodal EEG-fMRI Study
What it would overturn
If independently identified movements of consciousness units can alter physical time intervals, it would revise the assumption that physical timekeeping laws do not depend on conscious states; mere correlation between brain imaging and time estimation would not overturn that assumption.
Candidate labs / funders
Dimitri Van De Ville,École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne及University of Geneva,脑网络动力学; Anna Custo,EEG微状态与源定位; Dean V. Buonomano,神经计时
Specificity of Seth's formulation
CU lacks an independent measurement definition; post hoc renaming of a brain frequency or microstate as CU constitutes relabeling, not validation of a new mechanism.
Note
We were unable to verify the specific time perception paper corresponding to the cited "Samson et al., 2017," so it is not referenced; relativity unifies time and space, but in the Lorentz metric their signs and causal roles differ, so they cannot be unconditionally interchanged.
Evidence (2, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim time-8, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/time-8