I disagree. Not all rationality deals with AI and the Singularity. I know the stuff I prefer reading about doesn't, and I thought it was pretty obvious that this talk doesn't as well. So yes, perhaps some super-intelligence wouldn't need emotions to have goals, but humans do. And it is implied that Julia is talking about human rationality in her speech.

It's like when you first learn physics, and they say "Think of the world this way. It's not actually this way, but for what you need to learn about right now, that's the best model to use"

Especially in an introductory course you can't get anywhere if you are so bogged down with trying to explain all the exceptions to the rules. Sometimes you've got to generalize.