Subject was intriguing. The discussion was a bit pedantic and got mired down in terminology rather than theory.

Fun and fascinating! OK for an amateur. Also fun to see the logistics of a radio show recording session.

If this is typical of Philosophy Talk, I doubt I'll attend another one: even sitting up close it was hard to hear the speakers because they talked so fast. And it was exceedingly abstract. The guest from Singularity.org talked only in abstractions, and said such weird things as "there's about a 40% chance the human race could survive if robots had control." The music was cornball in the extreme, and the only good point was that one of the professors expressed my concern:the woman from Singularity said that robots could be programmed to express human values. But human values depend on whom you're asking. To a fundamentalist human life begins at conception, therefore if life is valuable, abortion is criminal. Even the 10 commandments "Thou shalt not kill" which would seem like a universal, could be interpreted in a way that would prohibit women's rights to abortion, or, at the other end of the spectrum, that would keep comatose and brain dead people alive for years. I was very disappointed in the quality of the discussion . Perhaps another topic would have been different. For example, I would have liked to hear the professors interviewing a very good poet, Jane Hershfield, just to see if it was different from yesterday's annoying hodgepodge.

I'm a frequent KALW listener and familiar with the program. This was my first time at a recording session. It's fascinating to see the show live. The topic was of personal interest, as was the conversation between Ken Taylor and John Perry. They work well together, demonstrating how to remain civil while articulating divergent opinions. I agree with my companion who felt the guest's contribution was minimal. The hosts could have easily carried the discussion without him, utilizing audience questions to stimulate and illuminate issues relevant to the topic.