It seemed like nothing but applause lights to me, though they're damned good applause lights. I won't spoil it, but there's a bit late in the video that really caused a delightful change of perspective for me.
It's anti-singularity if anything, and makes only a vague gesture towards rationality.
I personally loved this video. Such beautiful dreams! It made me feel like there was a great deal that was possible, and had I believed I wouldn't be alive to see it myself, I would be filled with regret. I think it has the power to make people dream of watching galaxies rise from distant worlds. Even if it's not so much about rationality, I feel it speaks well for science. At least, it shatters the common mis-impression that science makes everything mundane.
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.