Any new observations four years later?
New observations? No.
Mysterious answers are unlikely to pass through the peer review process unscathed. That's part of the reason peer review is necessary.
However, I've heard of (not firsthand and not documented, so take it with a grain of salt) some examples. For instance, I've heard of scientists who say that consciousness is caused by "emergent properties." Basically the idea is that the root of awareness is not a definable mechanism in and of itself, but rather emerges from the sum of the properties of the component neurons in the human brain.
That's not necessarily bad by itself, but problems arise when people then start saying that consciousness is an "emergent phenomenon" when asked "what causes consciousness."
"Emergence" is not an answer. It might be true, but only in the useless way that it's also true that the image on my computer monitor is the result of the sum total of the properties of its component parts. It's not
false but it's
not useful and it doesn't give me any more knowledge than what I had before the response was given. It's not an actual answer to the problem.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995...
"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
Nihil supernum