Stanton Friedman has died

I am really upset he did not get a chance to see the document dump that is coming.

The man was a legend. He was always on SIGHTINGS in the 1990's. He was our voice.

RIP buddy. May the lord bless and keep you.

Through all the years of ridicule, Skeptics shredding you.

YOU WERE RIGHT. WE ARE NOT ALONE

a reply to: JimOberg

Sadly he hadn't even retired long!

I was fortunate enough to be part of a UFO study group in the DFW area of Texas and had him out to speak a couple of times over the years!

Stan is missed!

I hope Stan learns of all the secrets of the universe now on the other side.
He probably smiled, chuckled and said I knew it.

Sad to hear this news. I always had much respect for the man.

RIP Mr Friedman. A true, honest investigator.

a reply to: Banditsat12oclock

RIP indeed.

Happened in 2019 by the way, just in case you thought it was current.

I was saddened by this news a couple of years ago. He could be a polarizing individual for sure, but the UFO community has missed his guidance, in my opinion anyway.

originally posted by: 2012v7
I was saddened by this news a couple of years ago. He could be a polarizing individual for sure, but the UFO community has missed his guidance, in my opinion anyway.

Unfortunately, I see his role as a kind of magician's assistant. A distraction, whether he was doing it deliberately or was being manipulated. Because during his investigative tenure, I'm afraid the whole UFO field stagnated horribly except for the occasional wild goose chase. Too bad, really.

I met him once when his "show" came to my city. Posted signs in the theater prohibited any picture-taking or other recordings. I briefly talked to him in the lobby before deciding not to attend. He had his own agenda and was not interested in hearing anything (including what my U.S. Navy A-7/F-18 college buddy pilot had to say regarding UAP encounters) that was outside his personal "domain". I thought that was rather close-minded for a serious fringe investigator.

Tom Mahood once told me that physics theories are like a--holes. Every physicist worth his/her salt has their own personal theory which is either a reinterpretation/embellishment of an existing theory or (rarely) something entirely original. Most well-known physicists earn a living by subscribing to their own theory and refusing to explore alternatives. (e.g., when is the last time you've read that a famous string theorist discounted their previous work and now subscribes wholeheartedly to loop quantum gravity?)

When I was in college, I took a religion course that taught that all of the World's hundreds of religions were derived from the five basic ones (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism). Sounds similar to physics theories.

originally posted by: stealthskater
Tom Mahood once told me that physics theories are like a--holes.

I never met Tom Mahood, but after reading all he wrote in his research about Bob Lazar, I almost feel like I know the guy. I know he got a master's in physics, like Stan Friedman, though Mahood's was gravity related, and I think Friedman's was nuclear related.

Every physicist worth his/her salt has their own personal theory which is either a reinterpretation/embellishment of an existing theory or (rarely) something entirely original.

If you're talking about theoretical physicists, it's sort of their job to come up with something different. As for why it's usually not something entirely original, that's sort of explained by Nima Arkani Hamed, a theoretical physicist, in this video:

In conversation with Nima Arkani-Hamed


In the question and answer session at 41:50, someone asks "how does your job work? (What does a theoretical physicist do?)"

Nima explains how it might seem like it would be easy to just dream up new stuff like the Higgs then wait around 50 years for the experiment to be conducted which proves 99% of the ideas wrong and how the 1% like the Higgs is right, but then he explains why it doesn't work that way and this is the part that many people don't seem to get:

44:30 "things don't work that way...we don't know the answers to all the questions, in fact we have very profound mysteries. But what we already know about the way the world works is so constraining that it's almost impossible ... to have a new idea which doesn't destroy everything that came before it. Even without a single new experiment, just agreement with all the old experiments, is enough to kill almost every idea that you might have....

It's almost impossible to solve these problems, precisely because we know so much already that anything you do is bound to screw everything up. So if you manage to find one idea that's not obviously wrong, it's a big accomplishment. Now that's not to say that it's right. But not obviously being wrong is already a huge accomplishment in this field. That's the job of a theoretical physicist."

So that's the challenge of coming up with new ideas. If you know enough about experiments already performed, most new theoretical ideas you can immediately prove are wrong based on experiments already done. This is also why for example Einstein couldn't abandon all the experiments supporting Newton's model. Now the next theory of gravity which replaces Einstein's will also have to explain why nearly all our experiments seem to agree with Einstein's model. Even if Einstein's model turns out to be somewhat wrong or at least incomplete, which it probably is, all those experimental matches still need to be explained by any new theory.

When I was in college, I took a religion course that taught that all of the World's hundreds of religions were derived from the five basic ones (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism).

So which of those is the religion of Scientology based on?

Sounds similar to physics theories.

The difference being religion is relatively unconstrained allowing a new religion like Scientology to be created, versus physics theories which are highly constrained now by hundreds of years of experimental evidence, for people familiar with the experiments at least. Someone who doesn't know the experiments already done is not constrained; it's usually people like that who come up with entirely original theories that they don't seem to realize have already been proven wrong by experiments, due to their ignorance.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
So which of those is the religion of Scientology based on?

I always got a kind of Zoroastrian feel about it, since it was one of the first that contemplated a kind of "war" between Good and Evil that played out on Earth with people as the pawns. I think L. Ron Hubbard came up with a lot of the rest because he didn't want to compete with Judeo-Christianity, and he also needed something somewhat original that he could copyright.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
So which of those is the religion of Scientology based on?

I always got a kind of Zoroastrian feel about it, since it was one of the first that contemplated a kind of "war" between Good and Evil that played out on Earth with people as the pawns. I think L. Ron Hubbard came up with a lot of the rest because he didn't want to compete with Judeo-Christianity, and he also needed something somewhat original that he could copyright.

Did he copyright the alien creature the evil lord Xenu? Or was that part so secret only the top level scientologists knew about it? I know Stan Friedman debunked Bob Lazar, but I don't know if he debunked the evil alien Lord Xenu:

Anyway it doesn't seem to be derived from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism as far as I can tell as inferred by stealthskater. Those are such old religions, they don't seem to have the concept of DC-8-like interplanetary craft in their backstory, which I don't know if these are that original, since DC-8s aren't original and rocket engines aren't original.


South Park: THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE Part 2

Maybe strapping rocket engines to DC-8s is kind of original, but a lot of people have come up with a lot more original spacecraft to bring aliens to Earth, like the alien invasion fleet in the "V" television series:


That could seem like a lot bigger threat than the batman balloon UAP "threat" leaked by the navy.

Rest in peace. a reply to: JimOberg

a reply to: JimOberg

RIP

I was watching a documentary the other day and at the end they said dedicated to Stanton Freidman. i thoght no way. looked like he died in an airport from a heart attack. as his last name says he did Free Man . he was the first UFO investigator that i learned their name. Probably early to mid 90s. Without Stanton we would have never known about Roswell.

RIP Stanton, prime example that you can be a skeptic and a believer.

I was Born in 1963, fortunately I was pretty smart ... there was talk of going to the moon ... I got bussed to a different neighborhood ... but I heard on the news about nasa and how much it was going to cost ... but a few days later I heard about some of the richest people in the world, and I waS smart enough then to know ... if I can't make it to the moon on nasas dime, that guy I just heard about has got more than they have trying to go to the moon .... its Drive Determination FREEDOM to Try .... God thank you for USA

I'm not doing it But others EVEDENTLY had the same thought ... because they are some doing Just That .... only in The USA

..has died.

Wow!

It's refreshing to see it written that way. Usually it's written in a supposedly timeless way, '..dies'.

It's like he hasn't finished dying, or he will die in the future '..he dies at 84' or something. It sounds more like prediction than description of recent events.

I am SO happy to finally see this kind of thing written normally, with proper english and not that odd news-speak that news always speak.

a reply to: JimOberg

How do you create threads and topics on here ?