Your responses to Wednesday’s survey
and my own opinions
Below, I list the 20 questions with the percentages of your responses. The percentages don’t add up to 100, and the residual represents people who did not choose one or the other, indicating an uncertainty. Underneath each question is a brief statement of my position. (Two of the questions didn’t appear correctly in the survey, and I have listed results as N/A.)
COVID jumped from bats to humans. The world’s public health response saved millions of lives. 4%
COVID came from a bioweapon lab. The world’s public health response made the pandemic worse. 78%
I wrote about genetic evidence that pointed to a lab origin already in April, 2020. The lockdowns delayed exposure by a few months, but ultimately everyone on earth has been exposed to COVID. The mRNA shots have been a public health disaster. https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-sars-cov-2-spike-protein-was https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/04/21/where-did-covid-19-come-from-part-2/
Weather disasters are more frequent recently because of climate change. 7%
Weather has been weaponized, and some recent storms are man-made. 69%
Helene followed a suspicious path and increased in intensity over mountains, where there is nothing to drive it. Lahaina and Acapulco storms look man-made to me. What I don't understand is the motivation behind man-made weather destruction. Is it weather warfare by a foreign power? Is it our own US military?
Fires are more frequent and more severe because of droughts caused by climate change. 5%
Some recent fires have been started by directed energy weapons, and by arson. 69%
The main evidence for me is that fires seem to burn buildings and even cars, while trees in between are still standing. Robert Brame has influenced me.
The 9/11 terror attacks were perpetrated by fundamentalist Muslims. 4%
The 9/11 terror attacks were orchestrated within the US deep state and/or Mossad. 81%
The standard story about airplanes bringing down 3 towers is not physically possible. Realizing this was a watershed moment in the evolution of my skepticism.
Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. 0%
JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy originating with the CIA. 87%
Even US Congress concluded it was a conspiracy. The Zapruder film shows that Kennedy was shot from the front, because the bullet impact threw his head backward.
UFO reports come from people with vivid imaginations or mental disorders. 9%
Extraterrestrial beings have affected human history for thousands of years, and they are here now. 47%
This is the hardest subject on which to know the truth. So many conflicting stories out there are evidence that there is an extensive cover-up effort, but I don't know what the truth is. It may be that ETs are from our own planet's future, time traveling. It may be that UFO technology is actually DARPA technology. Maybe we will get more information this year.
Consciousness is generated by nerve activity in the brain. 12%
Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and can be channeled by biological organisms. 69%
I have come around to William James's view that the brain channels consciousness, but does not create consciousness. https://experimentalfrontiers.scienceblog.com/2024/07/09/inverting-the-hard-problem-part-two/
Israel is under attack from Palestinian terrorists, and defends itself appropriately. 9%
10/7 was orchestrated by Mossad as an excuse to invade Gaza. 65%
As an American Jew, I feel a moral imperative to stand up publicly against the atrocities that Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza and the “territories”.
Putin’s attack on Ukraine was an act of aggression, and Ukraine needs help from NATO countries to defend itself. 1%
Russia has a legitimate interest in Ukraine for regional security, and the US does not. 81%
I don't exonerate Putin, but I think the US provoked this war with a 2014 coup, and that the US has no business in Ukraine.
School shootings will continue so long as guns are easily available to crazy people. 8%
School shootings are largely the work of people brainwashed by MK-Ultra and its successor programs. 45%
I support gun control, and I would like to see our police and military without guns. But I also see evidence that many of the school shootings and other terrorist attacks are perpetrated by people with CIA connections. I don't think MK-Ultra ever was shut down.
When we get older, things go wrong in our bodies and the damage accumulates until it kills us. 34%
We are evolved to have lifespans appropriate to our ecology, and as we approach our programmed lifespan, our bodies self-destruct. 34%
This is the subject of my book, and many years when biology of aging was my main occupation. Our bodies do not wear out; they self-destruct on a schedule.
Reality is objective, though we may see it through individual eyes. N/A
We make our own reality with our thoughts. N/A
I am a scientist, and the scientific method is founded in the idea that reality is objective. Nevertheless, there are intriguing hints that our intentions influence reality, especially collectively.
Vaccines have been part of a public health revolution that has vanquished infectious disease. 4%
Vaccines are unsafe because they are inadequately tested. 77%
This is a complicated story. A few vaccines have been important for public health. But when pharma companies gained blanket protection from liability in 1986, the incentives were tilted toward pushing dangerous vaccines onto the market.
The moon landing of 1969 was a triumph of technical innovation. 24%
The moon landing of 1969 was staged by actors on earth and in low earth orbit. 34%
I see strong evidence that people have brought rocks back from the moon and planted reflectors on the moon's surface. I also see photos and audio recordings that are staged. I can't explain it.
Humans are inherently brutally selfish, and governments protect us from one another. N/A
Humans are inherently caring, and governments are generally parasitic. N/A
There are so many things that government could do to promote the general welfare. Education, social safety nets, transportation infrastructure... But in present reality, the harm that governments do outweighs the good.
Free markets are the best way to insure prosperity for all those who contribute to the common good. 24%
Capitalism tends to concentrate power in the hands of a few monopolists who become rich at the expense of everyone else. 54%
I have even less faith in capitalists than in governments. "Free markets" are a myth useful to rich people. We need constraints on monopoly capital. Material reality is the only reality we can ever know.
The physics of atoms is the ultimate explanation for everything. N/A
In addition to matter there is spirit. There is a top-down order to events that lends meaning to physical reality. N/A
Physics explains a lot of things extraordinarily well. But I think life is an exception. I'm convinced that life depends on the power to bias quantum probabilities at the atomic level. I'm writing a book on this subject, and will blog about the book soon.
Climate change caused by CO2 is the biggest threat to humanity and to life on earth. 3%
The climate story is complicated, and the CO2 narrative has been weaponized by globalists. 87%
Humans are destroying the world's ecosystems, but CO2 has little to do with it. There are lots of good reasons to stop mining fossil fuels, but increased CO2 is not among them.
Humans are the cause of the ongoing Sixth Great Extinction. 27%
The myth of endangered species has been used to deny people’s natural property rights. 29%
I do think that the environmental movement has been co-opted and weaponized by globalists. But that doesn't change the fact that humans have done devastating damage to life on earth, and I want us to stop.
Astrology is a superstition. 25%
Star charts at the time of birth can predict personality and the general course of a person’s life. 25%
I have no faith in astrology, and no personal experience that it is useful, but I know and respect people who consult star charts.
Parapsychology is a pseudo-science. 8%
People commonly have unconscious premonitions and telepathic connections. 76%
There is overwhelming evidence for telepathic and precognitive effects, as I wrote about yesterday. The books and videos of Dean Radin are fun and also grounded in impeccable research.
For anyone interested in the Palestinian situation from a human perspective, I recommend the novels of Susan Abulhawa. She is wise concerning the human heart, and her characters -- both Israeli and Palestinian -- come to life as people we can love.
https://susanabulhawa.com/books/
I single out only one topic from your survey as it has long interested me – the possibility of time travel you mentioned in relation to UFOs. This is more aptly a topic fit for a separate essay but here is the gist of my thoughts.
Do the advanced technologies of UFOs come from the past or the future? Graham Hancock and Erik von Daniken, among others, offer copious evidence of (much) advanced civilizations preceding ours. They are dismissed as fantasies by the scientific establishment, which has also, until very recently, scoffed at the phenomenon of UFOs in general.
Although the possibility of time travelers from the future contradicts the Grandfather Paradox, it deserves serious investigation. My reasoning is based on the prophecies of the Indian Kalki Purana (Ancient) and the Book of Revelation in the Bible. Both share eerie similarities in describing how the present world of lies, deceit and wickedness was/will be put to an end by the interventions of beings with seemingly superhuman powers. I shan't speculate here whether such intervention can be ascribed to divine or alien origin. Instead, I draw attention to the texts of these accounts and ask if they were indeed 'prophecies' or accounts from future historians.
From a dispassionate reading of the two texts, it is apparent they are not prescient statements about what will transpire in the future. Rather, they are elaborate eyewitness accounts of what actually took place. Without belaboring the point, I simply reproduce one excerpt each from the texts themselves. I further posit the sudden outburst of technologies that led to the successive industrial revolutions from the 1st to the present 4th have been inspired by time travelers from the future.
{(1) Kalki Purana reference: https://archive.org/details/the-kalki-purana-english/page/229/mode/2up?view=theater}. (2) The Book of Ezekiel is another fascinating account in the Bible for those interested in UFOs)}
Kalki Purana (Ch 20 - Lord Kalki Goes Out to Conquer Kali and His Allies):
"In the battle between Lord Kalki and the two brothers, Koka and Vikoka, the leaders of both armies fought fiercely.
The battlefield redounded with the terrific sounds made by the elephants and horses, the gnawing of teeth, the challenging words of the combatants, the twanging of the bows, as well as the slaps and punches.
The frightening sounds of war cries spread all directions. It seemed that no one was able to escape the jaws of death. The demigods became so astonished while gazing at the ghastly scene that they practically fell from their celestial chariots.
Due to the onslaught of innumerable weapons, including iron rods, swords, Sakti (Energy) weapons, tridents, spears, clubs, and arrows, the entire battlefield became littered with severed arms, legs, and trunks."
Revelation (16 - The Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath):
"Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.
The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, 'It is done!'
Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.
The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.
Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.
From the sky huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, fell on people. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible."