I'd really prefer a pitch about us needing more rationality because the world is just getting massively more complex with more technological moving parts in general, compared to the vast majority of human history, not a thing that goes "because singularity therefore need rationality". Especially not with the "upcoming singularity", painting it as a sure thing.
If you think that singularity advocacy is the main purpose here, and alienating a possibly large fraction of opinionated people who could otherwise be receptive to rationality material by having them associate rationality material with singularitarianism, which they view as something between crackpottery and a cult, is an acceptable exchange for people who will buy into the singularity material as well buying into it along with the material, then fine, I guess.
It might be the general pattern of "here are tools for thinking better" together with "here's the conclusion I want your better thinking to end up at", done clumsily, that I don't like seeing. Once the professed conclusion triggers sufficient suspicion, I'll probably start assuming that the tools offered along with it are rigged as well and discard them.
If the rationality tools are actually good, having people use them should be a net positive even if there isn't a potentially very divisive preferred conclusion packaged along with them.
I'd really prefer a pitch about us needing more rationality because the world is just getting massively more complex with more technological moving parts in general, compared to the vast majority of human history
I'd call that an interest in rationality, and in particular, an interest in rationality OR the singularity.
When faced with a decision that might be really important — if say, the life of a loved one may be at risk — many people, though unfortunately not all, are moved to a sense of responsibility whereby they suddenly care more about being right than about looking right, feeling right, or even feeling good. It's when we have something to protect that many of us are most motivated to transcend our usual desires to "win the debate", "uphold our beliefs", or "have faith", and instead actually try to become right ... to have the best shot we can at saving the day with the decisions we make.
The upcoming technological singularity — an event where the lives of all our loved ones may or may not hang in the balance — is for many people a great inspiration to become more rational. Also, most of us want to convince others to be more rational, and videos are a powerful way to reach people, so I want to know:
What do you think is the online video that best inspires a strong initial interest in rationality or the singularity?
Please upvote each comment that contains a video that you approve for this purpose, not just your favorite; I want to use approval voting here so we get a robust ordering on the videos. Also to this end, please post at most one video per comment.
If you don't already have a favorite but want one, a place to start looking is the Singularity Summit videos at vimeo.com. Vimeo allows you to like/dislike videos, so that's another way you can donate information.
Some things to consider when voting:
I will periodically update this post with a list of links and their ratings, so we all have an easily accessible source of high-quality presentations we can send to our friends and colleauges to inspire rationality :)
List of videos; last updated April 17, 2011.