I think it's less about lowering the listener's defenses to the idea so that they're easily persuaded, and more about giving them the impression that they're actually learning something of substance, when they're actually not. In a week they'll be completely unable to articulate any of the important ideas from the talk, not because it's a poor learning style, but because there were never any important ideas to begin with. "You just have to watch it." It's like thought junk food. It's instantaneously satisfying but provides no actual mental nutrition.

Can you name any ideas, strong or otherwise, just any one, that would actually stand up to the kinds of misinformation and bad faith arguments that are common on the Internet though? If TED was, instead of being intellectual entertainment for the wealthy, but instead tried to portray itself as a serious scientific conference where papers are presented, it would stoop to "fighting with pigs", as it were, and open itself up to all sorts of stupid arguments. Like viruses don't cause disease, level of conversation, backed by faith-based arguments.

TED isn't a scientific conference with papers, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's there to drum up interest from the wealthy in the speakers and their projects. If you present there and Bill Gates hears your moving speech on, say, a better cure for malaria, he, and others with that kind of wealth, are liable to invest. But if your speech makes it sound like you're unsure and don't know what you're doing and are just fumbling around, hedging your bets, then you and project might end up langushing in obscurity. (Which, imo, a properly scientific presentation would consist of, because there are no guarantees, just probable possibilities vs improbable impossibilities.)

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

TED sells yearning for the sea, and not how much wood to gather in order to build the ship. There are other, better forums for that. What you're looking for wouldn't fit neatly into their format.

Still, if you're wealthy and see a TED talk, and then want to invest in the person in the basis of a good TED talk, I'll just close with a link to Elizabeth Holmes' convincing talk. I encourage you (or a hired scientist) to do your due diligence on a particular idea.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ho8geEtCYjw

TED is also a laundry for the wealthy. It’s a knock-off of Davos (also PR, because the WEF itself doesn’t have power) that isn’t overtly evil, and it’s also more accessible, insofar as anyone who wants to attend probably can if they make the effort.

The WEF is a weird brand of expensive deadpan satire. The institution itself doesn’t have the power to implement conspiratorial evil, and the attendees can do that anywhere. Davos is more of a meme than it does anything. People who own billion dollar meat companies aren’t actually going to make us eat bugs. TED is a nicer, left-speaking alternative for people who get the Davos joke, and its purpose is to trick the PMCs into thinking they are still in college and that this is actually a mutual aid society where the way things are is just the best humans can do.

> That style has became ubiquitous for TED-style talks and most American non-fiction books (even technical ones).

Yes, you nailed it. This trend of books built upon a single idea backed by tons of anecdotal references is like intellectual junk food.