dantsea

codeplex

Tony Robbins is no more annoyingly earnest than most of the music on your iPods... think about it...

There are two alternatives: Either you're sooo gen-X that you can smell earnestness a mile away, or well... you have been personally burned by a Tony Robbins acolyte, probably an ex, who tried to get you to lose weight.

The reference to web 2.0 culture made by Nick is accurate.... there is far less self-consciousness about appearing to have fallen victim to someone else's ill-conceived earnestness, and a blatant fearlessness about appearing passionate.

codeplex

beerthirty

Nick Denton

And are you seriously making fun of SF for not having good society pages? Please go back to New York.

Jonathan Grubb

opie

Tony is not a professor, and he wasn't on your dissertation committee, yet he still has some wisdom about his chosen area of expertise.

Tony is boldly anti-authoritarian, or, if you like, not very scientific.

It's true his methods could use more rigor, but he's generally just trying to help people bring out the best in themselves. My tongue-in-cheek comparisons to Newton and Galileo aside, it's some bold, groundbreaking stuff. This is why TED wanted to bring him in.

TED also brought in Rick Warren who seems to have melded the latest in self-help (mainly self-actualization) rhetoric with the bible, thus making the bible infinitely more useful...

codeplex

MATIC

Tony has made it his goal to study what makes people successful, to distill out workable strategies and philosophies, and to package them so that others can learn from them.

This jives with both the meritocratic and anti authoritarian spirit of the valley.

Contrary to what you seem to think, Tony mostly promotes enlightenment ideals. The notion that there are techniques to achieving what we want (rather than luck) and the notion that even ostensibly successful people might learn something from a "success coach" is anathema to a lot of old school "A student" types, such as Valleywag has revealed itself to be composed of.

Also, according to his own stories, Tony was not popular in high school nor was he a jock.

The real scoop in this is that TED has found an unlikely scientists who has peddled his discoveries in infomercials yet has (like Newton, Gallileo, etc.) found much scorn during his lifetime.

codeplex

Everybody came to San Francisco during the height of the "drug culture." We had a flavor of rock and roll named after us, after all.

davidmorgenstern

schvitzatura