I suspect that people are somehow predisposed to interpreting the result of failed memory formation by a brain-in-dire-straights as having looked upon themselves. It could be a quirk of how memory/congition works, or it could be cultural, even.

How could this possibly be measured empirically? I’m not suggesting you’re wrong, necessarily (I don’t know one way or another) but it stretches credulity to position such subjective experiences that lie well outside of experimental ethics a “fact”. Do you have any links to research that could push back on that intuition?