Modern Americans believe in an ideology that advocates the wisdom of the "average person" that coexists with constant manipulation by elites. Ancient Aliens is more proof that the average person is not particularly thoughtful but instead susceptible to wishful thinking. Don't think that doesn't also apply to politics, religion and economics.

Consider this - Ancient Aliens won't convince most people who understand science, but might convince people who believe in religion. I would argue that the ideas in Ancient Aliens are more reasonable and thought provoking than religious cosmology.

I have unmitigated disgust for every single person with approval power over the production of that show. Every single one of them is either an idiot or conman. There is no middle ground.

A lot of this type of content being produced and/or promoted by an internet company based in Boulder, and I can assure you they are all in on the con. Some of them want to focus more on yoga and health food, but the audience numbers have pushed the whole operation towards aliens, crystals, and anti-scientific thinking. I've come to see it as a purposeful attack on humanity's rational faculty.

Gaiam?

IIRC the media arm is a separate company now, but that's an excellent example.

Cosmic charlatans in Boulder aren't all that out of the ordinary. There's a lot of well-off yet surprisingly naive people to pray upon.

http://www.dailycamera.com/top-stories/ci_29300615/boulder-p...

"If you see the Buddha on the road..." advice I guess never made a great impression.

It's super frustrating. I used to enjoy watching legitimate documentaries - often featuring real-life witnesses of events from WW2, the great depression, various disasters, etc.

I suppose that was many years ago now, but I still miss that. I haven't been able to take history channel seriously in at least a decade. At this point the name is totally misleading and it really frustrates me to see that people take it seriously.

>Initially, Mr. Burns included skeptics on the show. But, he said, “we found that they had nothing to say, other than, ‘There’s no proof, there’s no proof.’ If we were going to do a show about the birth of Jesus, would we have people who say, ‘This is ridiculous?’ No.”

I look upon this mess as a barometer of how traumatic our educational system is to people.

With a loss of shared reality we will resort to violence. The only path to shared reality is empirical reason.

Fiction is on thing, but these products that intentionally blur the line between truth and falsehood are entirely wicked.

Why does everything have to fall into intolerance and politics? I was interested and then the article turned into crap.

Where? I mostly skimmed it but didn't see anything like that.

I would assume (OP please correct) paragraphs 5 & 6 are probably what is being referred to. It does seem a bit forced given the rest of the article.

Journalists should stick to what they are trained, paid, and most qualified to do: reporting. Just like actors should stick to acting.

Interesting. What did you object to specifically?

True believers don’t provide specifics, too easily rebutted.