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May 29, 2016 — Stanton T. Friedman


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
When Stanton T. Friedman shows up, the bill of fare will certainly cover some old ground, but did he try to sidestep a few probing questions about the Roswell case? And why does he accept the Aztec crash as real?

We'll have some more to say about this episode on this week's After The Paracast podcast, an exclusive feature of The Paracast+. Please check the following for information on how to sign up:

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Not listened yet, but I feared this would be the scenario again.

Looks like my question was put to Mr Friedman. (Thank you) I'm astonished he didn't know about this!!!!
 
Just listened to the show. Same old scripted Stanton for the most part, unfortunately. Top marks to Gene and Chris for some persistent and testing questioning, but Side Steppin' Stan wasn't for straying off script. At 81, having made a name for himself and a living out of the same stories for decades, I guess he's not going to change now, but it's a shame as it can become quite frustrating to listen to. I wonder if he really believes it or if it's all just showbusiness.

Many thanks for asking my question. I was being a bit mischievous :); true to form he didn't answer it!

Looking forward to finding out what the guys think on After The Paracast.
 
Grumpy? One of the reasons I listen is that this is one of the only shows that questions guests stories, although not to the degree that I would like. Example.... that "investigator" who, knows "someone" who is in contact with aliens and can arrange sightings, he sees a giant disco ball that flys behind a mountain, and alas, this guy is just sooooooo excited he forgets the camera hanging around his neck. Ok, remotely possible. But this person can arrange alien playdates willy nilly and he sees them a second time. What happened that instance? Why not arrange a third? Supposedly this guy has easily attainable, high defintion evidence of an alien presence, yet he chooses instead to collect tall tales and pass them off as proof. Grumpy, indeed.

I believe probabilty suggests that life is the norm, throughout the universe, and intelligent life is common, given time. Therein lies my interest in this subject, it would be the most profound and consequential occurrence in history. I also believe that travelling the distances required involves the mastery of time and space, which is probably mechanically impossible.

99% of the endless conversation, for decades, is hot air. It is totally aggravating. Like the lady from MUFON recently, gasping in awe at your vague third person story about someone seeing an orange orb. Total religious belief. Why do people tell these stories? Because they get some nice visit from a nice lady, who listens, gasping and goggle-eyed, nodding, aren't we special.

Most of these people think there have been multiple crashes in every state, 3 abductees on every block, every single mythology from every single group of humans is really about aliens, thousands of years ago there was an alien every five feet. Yet somehow, not one iota of actual evidence. Flummoxed!
 
I think Chris responds with a telling sound that says it all. :D
I can understand Chris getting grumpy. I can't understand why there doesn't seem to be ANY progress toward understanding the phenomenon any further. It seems like we're stuck in the 60's or 70's.

Even if you accept that the government has all the secrets hidden away and won't reveal them because of national security reasons - which is entirely logical (and even appropriate I would contend) - there has to be a crack in the window somewhere, wouldn't you think.

And I don't think anyone should hold their breath for 'disclosure' from government. It's NEVER going to happen.
 
Maybe Stan could talk more about space and exploration than Roswell next interview and where the hell small number are coming from in the 1950s. Furthermore Roswell more like just advance experiment went astray which caused mass panic in case of a broken arrow event ? or mole hunt. Anyway made great aspect for tourism.
 
Two interesting guess in a row! Sorry I'm just one of those old-school flying saucer buffs... just not really into the ultra paranormal (Sky critters etc.) aspect of it. Just started listening to the podcast with Stan Friedman. Want to interject a comment: regarding Hillary Clinton and other politicians I heard an interesting suggestion. I think it was a one time governor of Arizona but I don't remember, say that the impression he has is that no elected official will ever know about the UFO thing. His reasoning was based on the idea that elected officials are here today and gone tomorrow and therefore no reason for them to know. His suggestion is that, the ones who know are the long career types that are buried deep within the government who weren't elected. OK got to listen to the rest of the broadcast LOL
 
I haven't listened to the episode but in previous appearances Mr Friedman repeated his same old line. I'm currently listening to an interview with Dr Seth Shostak from 17 April 2016, very interesting. It would be well worth (Mr Friedman's) time to view. Dr Shostak goes on explaining possible machine intelligences, Fermi paradox, lifeforms in the universe, etc which are all relevant topics under discussion on the Paracast. It would be a delight to hear Dr Shostak on The Paracast who I think is a rationalist and a perfect guest for the show. Any chance of him accepting an interview on The Paracast ? Thanks you for a wonderful show. I'm not big on forum posting, a regular listener since the very first episode in Feb 2006.

Seth Shostak talk on Fermi Paradox in Cosmism Foundation:

 
I haven't listened to the episode but in previous appearances Mr Friedman repeated his same old line. I'm currently listening to an interview with Dr Seth Shostak from 17 April 2016, very interesting. It would be well worth (Mr Friedman's) time to view. Dr Shostak goes on explaining possible machine intelligences, Fermi paradox, lifeforms in the universe, etc which are all relevant topics under discussion on the Paracast. It would be a delight to hear Dr Shostak on The Paracast who I think is a rationalist and a perfect guest for the show. Any chance of him accepting an interview on The Paracast ? Thanks you for a wonderful show. I'm not big on forum posting, a regular listener since the very first episode in Feb 2006.

Seth Shostak talk on Fermi Paradox in Cosmism Foundation:
You can post guest suggestions here:
Guest suggestions for the Paracast
 
I'm currently listening to an interview with Dr Seth Shostak from 17 April 2016, very interesting.

Thanks for posting. Seth had some interesting things to say, particularly on the evolution of machine intelligence, but basically it’s the same old Seth we’ve heard for years. He’s dedicated his life to listening for alien radio signals, so all of his rationalizing basically comes down to, they wouldn’t be here, they would only be out there sending radio signals for Seth to find. Stanton has received criticism for having so committed to Roswell that it is difficult for him to now look at it critically. Can you imagine what it is like to be Seth, having dedicated his whole career and life to finding alien radio signals, a dedication threatened by the idea of interstellar travel. It’s not surprising that he reacts negatively to the idea of project Breakthrough Starshot, a civilization just a little over 100 years after its first powered flight making its first steps toward interstellar exploration. Or that he ignores one obvious answer to the Fermi Paradox, that they have reached us, likely a very long time ago. The Fermi logic doesn’t require them to come in to say hello. There are star systems in our galaxy that arose billions of years before our solar system. In less than 80 years after first reaching out to space we are looking at means for interstellar travel. The idea that there are civilizations out there who have spent millions and billions of years sitting on their home planet without ever venturing out, even robotically, beyond their home star’s system is unbelievable.

In the show Stanton briefly touched on the idea of expansion and colonization in the galaxy. When we consider where intelligent life might be in the universe we tend to think of the billions of planets in the habitable zone in our galaxy where life might originate. But that’s kind of like saying the place to find a human on earth is in Africa because that’s where human beings originated. The idea of galactic colonization is that while the length of time it would take one emerging civilization to expand throughout the galaxy might seem long to us, when compared to the age of the galaxy it is very short. Basically, if there is someone out there anywhere, they are everywhere.

I’ve seen a couple of different calculations for the time it would take one civilization to expand throughout the galaxy. They put it in the 5-6 million year range (this could be revised upward by two orders of magnitude with little difference in the outcome). One calculation is in an article that appeared a while back in the Journal Science by Dr T.B.H. Kuiper of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dr Mark Morris of CalTech. Their article was published in the earlier phases of SETI. It argued that the focus of the SETI search should be the local solar neighborhood since either extraterrestrial civilizations are so rare that there would little chance of a successful SETI search, or alternatively the galaxy has been fully populated and there would be a presence in our local solar neighborhood. Their calculations were based on conservative assumptions and a baseline technology that we could envision as far back as the 1960s (when in reality extraterrestrials would likely be using an advanced technology we today cannot envision).

Here is an abstract of the 1977 Science article:
Searching for Extraterrestrial Civilizations | Science
 
Thanks for posting. Seth had some interesting things to say, particularly on the evolution of machine intelligence, but basically it’s the same old Seth we’ve heard for years. He’s dedicated his life to listening for alien radio signals..."

Sand, thank you for your very valid arguments, it's always great to communicate with very well informed people from Paracast forums, like yourself. Yes, I agree Dr Shostak has been toting the same line for many years (decades?) and this would exacly be one of the reasons why an appearance on the show would be welcomed. . Shostak sound like a reasoneable man, it would be great to question him on his statements. To me it seem that his audiences (school kids, science fair) are usually way less informed than Paracast listeners and he basically has to go down to the level of understanding of his audience.
 
Some interesting points, Sand.

As I see it, there would be no Fermi's Paradox were there no feeder hypotheses such as the Drake Equation. The problem with the Drake Equation, however, is that too much of it is "think of a number", down to our best guess at several variables. Unfortunately, we cannot (yet at least) extrapolate trends from the pittance of hard evidence we have for some of these variables with any statistical confidence, because we don't have enough data to fill the gaps. For example, the only confirmed datum in terms of life arising on a planet which we have is one habitable planet thus far (i.e. Earth). You can take the Drake Equation, bang in a few low best guesses, and Fermi's Paradox disappears because the end numbers come out very small. For that reason, at face value, I don't think it's a paradox at all.

I like listening to Seth and fully support what SETI are doing, and as telescopes get bigger and more numerous the probabilities of his team finding something increase. We have to remember however that SETI as-set-up are operating with a narrow field of perspective. I mean narrow in terms of many factors: telescope availability, funding, stakeholder expectations, patches of sky where telescopes can look/listen depending on design and geographical location, frequencies listened to, known mathematical constants at our current levels of human understanding where we cast our net for "waterhole frequency" multiples, our expectations and assumptions of what constitutes a candidate signal, and so on. That's plenty of challenges for a project. Add in exotic models to the mix - potential shadow biospheres, for example, which we still haven't come to a conclusion on here on Earth (e.g. desert varnish), or multidimensional stuff - and it all gets increasingly beyond the scope of our current instruments and models of understanding.

It's all a game. :)
 
Just as a postscript to other civilisations having reached us already, I read somewhere recently that the Moon would be a good place to look for stuff, given how long the environment will preserve physical evidence.
 
Standanista asks whether Stanton Friedman really believes it or whether it’s all just showbusiness. That’s a question we all ask ourselves but promotion of the Roswell myth has definitely been showbusiness ever since the 1980s. I think he once sincerely believed the Roswell Crash was that of an ET flying saucer after talking to Major Jesse Marcel in 1978. Marcel, who may well have exaggerated, certainly seems to have believed that the debris at the Foster Ranch in 1947 was from a flying saucer since it clearly wasn’t a crashed airplane or a V2 rocket test –or, for that matter, a weather balloon. What else could this extended debris field (of light materials and little metal) possibly be? From the seemingly devout beliefs of Marcel and Friedman --plus some help from Moore, Randall, Schmitt, Berlitz, and others-- sprang a creed one can only call “Roswellianism” which mushroomed during the last thirty years.

Back in 1947 no one at the Roswell Army Air Force Base had the slightest inkling of the top secret Project Mogul balloon assemblies that were being flown from near Alamogordo at the time. Their purpose was long range detection and recording of Soviet atomic tests. These were from 400 to 700 feet long and consisted of perhaps 20 or more balloons plus a large sonobuoy, microphone devices, and radar reflectors all strung together. Even General Ramey may not have known about Project Mogul at the time but after the Roswell Crash he was clearly told by Washington to deflect any interest in the whole matter by saying the wreckage was merely that of an ordinary weather balloon. Most UFO researchers now accept Project Mogul was what lead to the so-called Roswell Incident but there are still hold-outs who won't allow any of it.

I’m sure Stanton always refutes the suggestion that the crash debris at the Foster Ranch came from a Project Mogul balloon train but to me the evidence for that is totally convincing. Doubters should watch a recent full episode on the Smithsonian Channel: UFOs Declassified: Roswell Report which is difficult indeed to argue with. In addition to that, a report on Project Mogul by James McAndrew, 1st Lt. USAFR, states unequivocally that some debris from the Roswell Crash which Ramey had had shipped to Wright Field was positively identified as Mogul components by Colonel Duffy, a former project officer of Mogul*. This was definitely NOT an alien spaceship!

I forget whether Gene and Chris dared mention the dreaded word “Mogul” to Stanton at any stage of the interview but I can only guess what his reaction would have been. Like many other Roswellians and paranoid conspiracy theorists who reject the Project Mogul solution as unacceptable he would probably still insist it is merely further government cover-up. “What about the small alien bodies?”, some of these guys ask --at which stage I’d know there is simply no point in ever trying to reason with Roswell true believers!

* see: Project Mogul
 
This is the one episode I might give a pass to. Clearly from the replies so far it's the same old Stanton sticking to the well rehersed and blinkered script.

Can anyone tell me if MJ12 gets a mention? That might make me listen.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk
 
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