The Filan Cabinet

In this episode, I give you updates from my trip with friends to see the 2024 total solar eclipse. Questions answered include: - Why are we bothering to go see it? - How many of us will fail to make it to the eclipse? - Does it actually get darker during a total solar eclipse, or is that just an optical illusion? - What moral dilemma will we face, and what will we do? - Whose lav m

In this episode, I speak with Aaron Silverbook about the bacteria that cause cavities, and how different bacteria can prevent them: specifically, a type of bacterium that you can buy at luminaprobiotic.com. This podcast episode has not been approved by the FDA. Specific topics we talk about include: How do bacteria cause cavities? How can you create an anti-cavity bacterium? What'

In this episode, I talk to Holly Elmore about her advocacy around AI Pause - encouraging governments to pause the development of more and more powerful AI. Topics we discuss include: Why advocate specifically for AI pause? What costs of AI pause would be worth it? What might AI pause look like? What are the realistic downsides of AI pause? How the Effective Altruism community rela

In this episode, Divia Eden and Ronny Fernandez talk about the (strong) orthogonality thesis - that arbitrarily smart intelligences can be paired with arbitrary goals, without additional complication beyond that of specifying the goal - with light prompting from me. Topics they touch on include: Why aren't bees brilliant scientists? Can you efficiently make an AGI out of one part

In this episode I chat with Jeffrey Heninger about his religious beliefs and practices as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes colloquially referred to as "the Mormon church" or "the LDS church". Topics we talk about include: Who or what is God? How can we know things about God? In particular, what role does religious experience play? To what degr

Every year, the Centre for Effective Altruism runs a number of "Effective Altruism Global" (EA Global or EAG for short) conferences thru-out the world. This year, I attended the one held in the San Francisco Bay Area, and talked to a variety of participants about their relationship with effective altruism, the community around that idea, and the conference. Timestamps: 00:00:16 -

In this episode I chat with John Halstead about whether climate change will kill us all. He thinks it won't. Topics we talk about include: How did the effective altrism community come to have someone dedicated to the question of whether climate change will kill us all? How bad will climate change likely be? How is the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere different from that of

In this episode I speak with Shea Levy about Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, and what it has to say about ethics and epistemology. Topics we talk about include: What is Objectivism? Can you be an Objectivist and disagree with Ayn Rand? What's the Objectivist theory of aesthetics? Why isn't there a biography of Ayn Rand approved of by orthodox Objectivists? What's so bad abou

In this episode I speak with Oliver Habryka, head of Lightcone Infrastructure, the organization that runs the internet forum LessWrong, about his projects in the rationality and existential risk spaces. Topics we talk about include: How did LessWrong get revived? How good is LessWrong? Is there anything that beats essays for making intellectual contributions on the internet? Why d

In this episode, I speak with Divia Eden about operant conditioning, and how relevant it is to human and non-human animal behaviour. Topics we cover include: How close are we to teaching grammar to dogs? What are the important differences between human and dog cognition? How important are unmodelled "trainer effects" in dog training? Why do people underrate positive reinforcement?