You're really milking the semantics here. But OK; I give. What Friedman said about the compartmentalization of secret projects would be correct and not extraordinary if we were just referring to the compartmentalization itself and nothing else.
But you and I both know that Friedman has made a career of claiming evidence of extraterrestrials visiting this planet, and our government's knowledge of it. This is where I demand extraordinary evidence, since the claim is as well.
You tell me why that is extraordinary.
I said it earlier; something that fundamentally changes our understanding of the universe. Right now, we don't if extraterrestrials exist. Proof of a positive would change mankind forever, even if it was just an intelligent radio signal.
Zoology is often not in posession of evidence with such qualities, but that doesn’t mean animals don’t exist. You can’t reproduce a Mammoth, but we have samples.
Your first sentence defines cryptozoology. The second sentence on the other hand, references an animal that left reproducible, verifiable, and accessible evidence that can be observed by just about anyone.
I don’t hold with every claim that people make about UFO’s, but claims of no evidence are false.
Let's be clear here; if you see an object in the sky that moves in a way that is contrary to everything we know about air travel and natural phenomena, you have seen a UFO. However, it is only evidence of the fact that you have seen something you can't explain, it is NOT evidence of aliens. There is a difference.
You could just as easily claim that it was evidence of time travelers in a Boeing jet from the future as you could aliens, since we have equal evidence of the existence of both (i.e. none).
Regarding semantics, not really. I guess the biger picture here is that the narrow experience of the A51 workers is being used to “explain” UFO’s. That is an opinion on the part of those workers, and as Friedman explained, they would be confined to their project, and probably would not know about UFO work that may or may not have been taking place. There is more than a bit of sleight-of-hand being used by the writer of the article about these guys. That is not to say there is anything bad about the men, or even dishonest. Whether he had an axe to grind on ufology in general or not, his statement was more honest than the implication made by the author.
The reason why this “semantic” is important is that it gets very hard to have a discussion of otherwise logical circumstances when the messenger (Friedman) overshadows the message. I’m saying that people should apply critical thinking, despite the messenger.
“I said it earlier; something that fundamentally changes our understanding of the universe. Right now, we don’t if extraterrestrials exist. Proof of a positive would change mankind forever, even if it was just an intelligent radio signal.”
You’re right, you did say that, and I agree. There is still science that has relied on less data to be accepted. That is part of my irritation. A quark was never threatening, but vehicles in our skies or possibly alien creatures that are not under our control or knowledge, that is scary. Humans tend to rule out things that are simulataneously scary and uncontrollable, as a defense mechanism. Our intellect should be able to operate in spite of that mechanism, but not for everybody.
“Your first sentence defines cryptozoology. The second sentence on the other hand, references an animal that left reproducible, verifiable, and accessible evidence that can be observed by just about anyone.”
I’ve been told that Mammoth flesh has been discovered, but I have not seen it, and I am not likely to see it. That does not mean the evidence is non-real? Ufology is in a similar situation, accept that people who have recovered Mammoth meat aren’t labeled “crazy”.
“Let’s be clear here; if you see an object in the sky that moves in a way that is contrary to everything we know about air travel and natural phenomena, you have seen a UFO. However, it is only evidence of the fact that you have seen something you can’t explain, it is NOT evidence of aliens. There is a difference.
You could just as easily claim that it was evidence of time travelers in a Boeing jet from the future as you could aliens, since we have equal evidence of the existence of both (i.e. none).”
You are right about UFO’s and the ET Hypothesis. I have a hunch that ET has them and we’ve seen them, but that is not proof. I was making a more general statement that there has been evidence of both things, whether they are linked or not. Personally, I am much more interested in the advanced technology, and developing it ourselves.