the altruists have arrived

I really hate that I have to take time away from research and meetings to respond to this, but I think this response is earned by the folks featured in my video, the people in communities and legislators I’ve consulted with, and those who have taken the time and expense to continue the research.

I’ve been “exposed” in a very long, pedantic, and seemingly-substantive Substack article.
At first, my response was confusion and…excitement.
Like, holy shit, this person has combed through all this research and is giving me a bunch of free devil’s advocates for a follow-up infrasound feature.

But it seemed desperate and mean. I’m attacked for…creating a sundial and having “scientific looking microphones”. The author is constantly ping-ponging the people interviewed or featured in my videos as poor, stupid people, or people that are owed more empathy than I allotted. Something is just weird about this.

So after some sniffing around, I realize I’m being brigaded by someone deep in the Effective Altruism community. The author is, quite literally, paid by rotational-wealth NPO to write this very article among many others. I know what you’re thinking, and I know how this sounds. The battle cry of the pseudoscientist is poisoning the well of criticism.
But please do browse his bibliography.
Andy lives in a parallel universe where datacenters don’t waste water, AI artwork is without victims, and using ChatGPT doesn’t harm the environment. This is one of the many takes that perfectly align with the board, contributors, and partners with Coefficient Giving, formally called Open Philanthropy, but changed after its close association with Sam Bankman-Fried was causing some well-earned skepticism.

The effective altruism movement, if we want to be gracious in calling it a “movement”, is a rabbit hole of reciprocal wealth. A lot of billionaires unload money into its related NPOs, and oddly enough, that money often goes into buying NVIDIA GPUs for an altruistic AI project, directly to Bill Gates to use philanthropically, or to grants for independent journalists and content creators to attack research that is being used to shift legislation away from things that the partners have interest in. Since it’s 2026, those things are data centers and AI.

But how did my infrasound content, of all things, end up as the target of a special interest group?
Well, as luck would have it, It turns out that I’m getting cited a whole lot in legislative meetings that are voting on datacenter zoning and moratoriums.
So while I’ll save my digging deep into the clusterfuck that is effective altruism for another time (I’m inspired now!), below is a quick graphic summarizing where this article came from and why it was written. Feel free to “do your own research”. The connection between EA and tech billionaires is not something I’m the first to document.

That’s a lot of .gov action for a YouTuber who doesn’t understand science!

The classic AI billionaire to article pipeline.

Now that we’ve outlined which one of us is spending money to research and fact-check videos about infrasound and which is quite literally being paid to create citations that lobbyists will use to discredit them, let’s dig into some of what he’s saying in the article linked above.

I’m not going to go through Andy’s novel line-by-line because it’s a waste of everyone’s time. The entire framework of attacks like this are to “machine gun” information in a way that overwhelms the reader so they concede that the writer has an exhaustive understanding of the topic. Ask me how I know this! It’s a trick I’ve used to breeze past a pedantic statement that doesn’t actually cover something of substance in my videos, such as how I’ve followed responsible disclosure guidelines. But this brings me to my first admission of guilt:

1. On-screen graphics are not always citations, but sometimes may appear to be.

There’s a lot of time and tempo change between researching, writing, and editing. My infrasound videos have about 3TB of footage, sliced down into 2 videos running less than 30 minutes per piece. They may seem like elaborate deep dives, but you’re watching an entertaining overview of the actual deep dive. I spend an excruciating amount of time balancing the depth of research versus the probability that anyone will be interested in watching or learning about it. Some may disagree, but I think I’m doing a good job at this. More importantly, I’m always learning how to do it better with each video as I pay close attention to what makes viewers stick around.

My way of breezing through citations is using them as on-screen graphics. Unfortunately, not all graphics are consistent with what I’m talking about in a particular clip of the video. For example, an article making statement A may have a graphic or headline that fits better with statement B. It provides the viewer with continuity and visual confirmation, but if you comb through every on-screen article and compare it to the sentence coming out of my mouth, guess what? You’ll occasionally, if not seldomly, find that the 2 don’t perfectly line up.

But context is important. If a graphic isn’t confirming a point made in the video, that doesn’t mean the point in the video is a nefarious lie. It’s a truly wild stretch to assume that my videos are just factless voids of manipulation and Andy is the first person to catch on. Which brings me to the next segment.

2. I fact-check. Always.

With the amount I complain about legal expenses, it’s probably not a secret that I often run my entire scripts past attorneys. And they catch a lot, sometimes transforming the video significantly, and in at least two cases, resulting in a video project being shelved. This isn’t always because of poor research, but because perfect is the enemy of good. And I need to be perfect sometimes for all the wrong reasons.

For example, I cannot drive up to a datacenter owned by the wealthiest person in history (who also happens to be a litigious asshole), pull out some equipment, measure infrasound, and make up readings or make claims about their health effects without a really good list of citations. If I make a single mistake in activities like this and when reporting on them, I’ll lose everything I have, including my channel. I do not receive any benefits of doubts when it comes to potential libel.

For months, I’ve had private investigators hired to park in front of my property. Are we to assume the company hiring them hasn’t found out about lawsuits yet?
So the idea that I’m intentionally misleading millions of people and legislators is not something I’m insulted by because in the context of my daily stressors, it’s comedy.


3. Categorical Dismissal vs. Scientific Uncertainty

Andy’s central thesis that sub-audible infrasound issues are “fake” is a definitive and hyperbolic claim that is impossible to sustain scientifically. In research, there is an infinite distance between “not yet proven without a doubt” and “fake”.
Anesthesia, consciousness, contagious yawning, and a whole library of things we experience are not completely understood. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

One thing that irks me is how heavily Andy relies on the “nocebo effect” (the idea that symptoms are caused by negative expectations).
Of course nocebo effect is a real confounding variable, but using it as a "catch all" to dismiss physical data ignores the actual physiological mechanisms routinely observed.

All of this happens within the confines of a world where Andy seemingly doesn’t have the ability to fact-check himself.
Recent research into mechanotransduction suggests that humans can "feel" sound through non-auditory pathways. Low-frequency noise can modulate pressure-sensitive ion channels (like PIEZO1), potentially causing neuroinflammatory responses or cellular stress even if the sound is below the threshold of "hearing" [Armand & Bikaran, 2025; MDPI, 2026].
This is just one of many examples of where infrasound is observed to be related to physiological responses that have absolutely nothing to do with one’s conscious perception or bias. “

Note: Due to IP restrictions, not all papers can be linked, only referenced.
But here is a more recent study pertaining to PIEZO1 and TRP4 channels.

4. Comparing Light to Sound is Stupid (Except when Andy does it)

As much as I detest surveillance cameras indoors, I kind of wish I had one so I could see the look on my face as Andy repeatedly tried to cross-explain sound and light waves. His article does this 3 times before using the comparison of sound and light waves as a source to discredit my video.

In reality, there’s a lot of false equivalence that needs to be addressed when throwing shade on ultraviolet light comparisons. Light interacts with human tissue at a quantum/chemical level. Sound interacts with human tissue via mechanical resonance. UV light is blocked by skin while infrasound passes through solid structures with ease. This means that every human has their own resonant frequencies for their bones and organs that can be mechanically stimulated by external sources of mechanical pressure regardless of if the source is audible or not.

The problem, as overwhelmingly stated in my video, is that this is an extremely chaotic thing to study at a physiological level. A human stomach can expand up to 25x its empty size, so when you drink a few sips of water, you likely have drastically changed what frequencies and amplitudes of both audible or infrasonic sounds may cause nausea.
My point is, just because something is difficult to prove doesn’t mean that it’s not real.

5. Wind-Turbines and Oversimplification

While not recently, infrasound research has been poisoned by special interest groups backed by energy companies trying to create arguments against wind turbines. I caught on to this very quickly years ago and had to be especially careful to avoid research papers primarily focused on wind energy. But it’s also not difficult to do this for some very important reasons unrelated to politics or lobbying:

I’ve spent a gross amount of time playing Othello on my phone while sitting next to a device measuring wind farms and datacenters. Datacenters and cryptocurrency mines have a drastically different acoustic signature than wind turbines. Datacenters utilize high-velocity cooling fans and, in many cases, massive diesel generators in a 24/7, high-density configuration. They’re also typically much closer to residential zones. This is easily enough of a difference to segregate to 2 areas of study.
Of course there isn’t much evidence that AI datacenter infrasound is harmful because AI datacenters weren’t a common thing a decade ago.

But it is tricking out, and we have very new research that directly studies datacenters. A 2026 report by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute [Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers] points to specific health clusters (vertigo, nausea, hypertension) in Virginia and Texas specifically linked to these industrial cooling arrays, noting that standard decibel meters (A-weighted) fail to capture the low-frequency energy that residents report that is literally “vibrating their homes”.

6. Infrasound and ground-borne vibration are often the same thing.

Andy seems to think that I’ve “confused” infrasound with ground-borne vibration, as if these 2 things aren’t a constant catalyst for one another. I’m actually perplexed that a former physics teacher would even argue this at the risk of discrediting themselves to anyone capable of using common sense.
For any 7 year olds reading, I’ll explain:

If we shoot infrasound at the firetruck, it rumbles the firetruck. The fireman and his cute dog in the firetruck get tummy aches from the rumbling. People outside of the firetruck hear a noise from all the rumbling and it annoys them.

For the rest of us, as I explained in the video, it’s really hard to accurately measure the full spectrum of infrasound because:

A. Traditional dynamic or condenser microphone diaphragms can only read down to a certain periodic function of pressure cycles, and then a sharp shelf curve begins to cut everything off. So if you had a sustained 100dB infrasound, even a research-grade microphone would pick up 5Hz at 100dB, 4.5Hz at 84dB, 4Hz at 79dB, and so on.
I’ve actually made filters that correct this in post, but get this, those shelves move around a bit depending on temperature and amplitude levels. What you’re left with is a time and cost exhaustive process of calibrating your microphone every single time you want to take a measurement. Thank goodness for vibration sensors…er…

B. Vibration sensors can accurately read all the way down to subtle, seldomly-occuring shockwaves. But there are 2 problems. They don’t have the accolades of resonance resistance that traditional microphone diaphragms have, so you will almost always have a weak spot somewhere. Depending on how high that weak spot is on the frequency spectrum, since infrasound is very seldom a perfect unmodulated sine, you may also have harmonic resonances appearing based on the fourier transform as weighted sums of the fundamental.

So ideally, you’d use a low pass filter on the acoustic microphone, a high pass on the vibration sensor, and shelving filters built into the translation circuit on the vibration sensor to compensate for the resonance.

Now before we move on, it’s important to note that this “confusing concept of vibration and infrasound being related” was cited in “Health implications of the rapid rise of data centers in Virginia”, which was published the same week my datacenter video released. It also mentions datacenter water use, so I’m sure Andy has his work cut out for him in reaching to discredit it in the name of altruism.

7. The decibel problem.

I’ve already explained how challenging it is to get a quality infrasound measurement, as it is infinitely more difficult than just holding up a decibel meter next to a noise source and logging the number. Now imagine everyone getting measurements using the exact same combinations of microphones, sensors, and filters, which, by the way, will cost them 5 figures for any acceptable level of accuracy.

Solving this problem is what I immediately turned my attention to when finishing my last infrasound-related video. I believe that there may be a way to accurately capture the full spectrum of pressure waves via infrared optical sensors and a collimated light source inside a self-contained portable unit. It’s something I’m actively working on. But to be clear…

This is a logistical problem, not evidence of pseudoscience.
So when Andy read the words “low-quality data” in the World Health Organization’s analysis of infrasound exposure research, he didn’t seem to realize that the “low quality” was in the consistency of measuring the infrasound, not analysing physiological effects.
To me, this measurement problem is a challenge that needs a solution. I’m inspired by it. To Andy, this seems to further qualify as evidence that infrasound is fake.

8. This “hit-piece” is good news.

The fact that someone is paid to spend an enormous amount of time pedantically combing through hours of video, reaching in every possible direction to discredit and insult me, my viewers, the cited researchers, and the people whose lives have been devastated by what appears to be infrasound means that our message has reached enough of the general public and their legislators to justify a low blow.

Nobody is bringing a tablet to city council meetings and playing my videos. The presented information inspires them to roll up their sleeves, pick and choose what is reputable and relevant to their communities, and then present it formally to legislators. And apparently, it’s working well enough for those running Coefficient Giving to try and create contrary materials and an army of sea lion accounts to discredit it.

The truly absurd reality I’m hit with when I hear about or experience things like this:

Why doesn’t this organization just spend this money on researching and mitigating these things?
Like, wouldn’t actually lowering the water use of a datacenter help legislation pass in their favor?
Wouldn’t actually researching infrasound sources and reducing it where there’s growing evidence of harm make this all go away?

I’ve measured sound sources in hundreds of places, designed low-cost measurement devices, and interviewed hundreds of people suffering from something that I believe to be 100% real. And I’ve done it all on a shoestring budget provided by my videos and viewers under the umbrella of a nonprofit of which I do not claim a salary.

How is it possible that organizations like this, funded by literal billionaires acting in the name of “altruism”, can put a nonprofit’s tax-deductible money into denying such a long-documented problem instead of fixing it?

That’s a question I’m not going to waste time trying to find an answer to.
What angers me the most about Andy’s post is that I could have spent this afternoon working on that optical microphone, but instead I’m feeling pressured to defend research that already holds its own ground.
One of the ways tactics like this are effective is by providing a distraction from the research.

I hope I’ve addressed the bulk of this for anyone who, in good faith, feels like they’ve been misled by my infrasound videos.
Do know that I’m the first person to acknowledge that there’s always room for improvement.