The Filan Cabinet

Daniel Filan

An interview podcast where I, Daniel Filan, interview guests about topics I'm interested in, with the aim of clarifying how the guest understands that topic.

  1. 08/12/2025

    18 - 2025 Seattle vacation

    Travelogue of my trip to Seattle in September of 2025.   Photo albums: Discovery Park walk 2025-09-09: https://photos.app.goo.gl/oEFHbZqW4fjZN8wB6 Washington Park Arboretum 2025-09-10: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nACZ3WpThEUqXdvX7 Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop 2025-09-10: https://photos.app.goo.gl/cWdDgT5xgcX1cKJX8 Cougar Mountain hike 2025-09-11: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ru8LezQGR3Bvbr5w7 Poo Poo Point Trail 2025-09-13: https://photos.app.goo.gl/6nDqcPzTM5xxWzgX7 Twice Sold Tales cats (and tempting books) 2025-09-14: https://photos.app.goo.gl/zqh6SisHnmmrAiDX8   Books I mention reading: Fabulae Syrae: https://www.amazon.com/Fabulae-Syrae-Lingua-Latina-Latin/dp/1585104280/ Cambridge Latin Course, book 2 (4th edition): https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Latin-Course-American-English/dp/0521782295/ Sermones Romani: https://www.amazon.com/Sermones-Romani-discipulorum-Lingua-Latina/dp/1585101958/ Tusculan Disputations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusculanae_Disputationes Inventing Temperature: https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Temperature-Measurement-Scientific-Philosophy/dp/0195337387/ The Lover's Curse: A Tiered Reader of Aeneid 4: https://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Curse-Tiered-Reader-Aeneid/dp/B0CJ4KMF8V/ The Aeneid, translated by Sarah Ruden: https://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Vergil/dp/0300240104 The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0197754023 Amphitryo Comoedia (Lingua Latina): https://www.amazon.com/Amphitryo-Comoedia-Lingua-Latina-Latin/dp/158510194X/    Restaurants in Seattle: Seattle resaturant recommendations: https://scyy.fi/recs/seattle Rojo's mexican food: https://www.rojosmexicanfood.com/ Pi Vegan Pizzeria: https://www.pizzapivegan.com/ Due' Cucina: https://duecucina.com/ Kati Vegan Thai: https://www.kativeganthai.com/ Frankie & Jo's: https://frankieandjos.com/ Ramen Danbo Seattle: https://ramendanbo.com/

    2h 37m

  2. 03/08/2025

    17 - Caspar Oesterheld on evidential cooperation in large worlds (ECL)

    In this episode, I chat with Caspar Oesterheld about a relatively simple application of weird decision theory: evidential cooperation in large worlds, or ECL for short. The tl;dr is you think there's at least some small probability of a very large multiverse, so you try to follow something closer to the average of all the values of civilizations in that multiverse that think like you, and therefore 'make it more likely' (in an evidential way) that those other civilizations do things that you like.   Links for various things that Caspar has provided: ECL overview page: https://longtermrisk.org/ecl A while after the recording, Caspar and others started this ECL-related fundraiser: https://manifund.org/projects/acausal-safety-fund-a-team-to-do-research-and-interventions Yudkowsky: Timeless Decision Theory. https://intelligence.org/files/TDT.pdf Functional Decision Theory is introduced in the following two papers. Both also introduce XOR blackmail. * Yudkowsky and Soares (2018): Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.05060 * Levinstein and Soares (2020): Cheating Death in Damascus. Journal of Philosophy 117 (5), pages 237–266. https://intelligence.org/files/DeathInDamascus.pdf Oesterheld et al. (2025): A dataset of questions on decision-theoretic reasoning in Newcomb-like problems. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10588 MacAskill et al. (2021): The Evidentialist's Wager. The Journal of Philosophy 118 (6), pages 320–342. https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/MacAskill_et_al_Evidentialist_Wager.pdf Treutlein (2018): Three wagers for multiverse-wide superrationality. https://casparoesterheld.com/2018/03/31/three-wagers-for-multiverse-wide-superrationality/  A survey of polls on Newcomb's problem https://casparoesterheld.com/2017/06/27/a-survey-of-polls-on-newcombs-problem/ Ahmed (2014): Evidence, Decision and Causality. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/evidence-decision-and-causality/7077949D2CD42E99C08D4FBFE5321148#fndtn-information Regarding the Smoking Lesion and Tickle Defense: * This is discussed in Chapter 4 of the aforementioned "Evidence, Decision and Causality". * I also wrote the following introduction: https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/coesterh/TickleDefenseIntro.pdf  One way EDT can escape XOR blackmail: Treutlein: Anthropic uncertainty in the Evidential Blackmail. https://casparoesterheld.com/2017/05/12/anthropic-uncertainty-in-the-evidential-blackmail A more updateless approach to ECL: Treutlein: UDT is 'updateless' about its utility function. https://casparoesterheld.com/2018/03/28/udt-is-updateless-about-its-utility-function/ Finnveden: ECL with AI. https://lukasfinnveden.substack.com/p/ecl-with-ai Christiano: When is unaligned AI morally valuable? https://ai-alignment.com/sympathizing-with-ai-e11a4bf5ef6e Bell et al. (2021): Reinforcement Learning in Newcomblike Environments. NeurIPS. https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2021/file/b9ed18a301c9f3d183938c451fa183df-Paper.pdf

    1h 44m

  3. 30/06/2025

    16 - Alessandro on learning Latin and Greek

    In this episode, I chat with Alessandro (@polisisti on X/Twitter) about our respective experiences learning Latin (and in his case ancient Greek).   The Ranieri-Roberts approach to learning ancient Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vwb1wVzPec We need to talk about Latinitas: https://foundinantiquity.com/2024/04/15/we-need-to-talk-about-latinitas/ Legentibus: https://legentibus.com/   Intermediate-level Greek texts: There is a good series called "Reading Greek" published by the Joint Association of Classics Teachers. An example volume is "The Intellectual Revolution: Selections from Euripides, Thucydides and Plato".   Intermediate-level Latin texts: The reader Alessandro used in his second-year course was the "Oxford Latin Reader", edited by Maurice Balme and James Morwood. However, Alessandro prefers "Wheelock's Latin Reader: Selections from Latin Literature", edited by Richard A. LaFleur. Carmina Burana is a collection of poems that is fairly easy and very fun to read. An anthology of medieval Latin texts that Alessandro greatly enjoys is "Reading Medieval Latin" by Keith Sidwell. Many of these selections are of intermediate difficulty (a few are very hard). The prose works of Seneca bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced.   Dictionaries and grammars: Alessandro's favourite Latin dictionary: The "Oxford Latin Dictionary" For medieval Latin: "Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources"  * the DMLBS is freely searchable at https://logeion.uchicago.edu For advanced Latin grammar: "A New Latin Syntax" by E.C. Woodcock Alessandro's favourite Greek dictionary: The "Cambridge Greek Lexicon" "The Greek Particles" by John Dewar Denniston is the book that's very helpful for reading Plato.

    1h 8m

  4. 17/11/2024

    15 - On learning Latin

    In which I monologue about my experience learning Latin. Links: My friend's podcast episode: https://mutualunderstanding.substack.com/p/election-and-other-stuff-on-my-mind r/latin: https://www.reddit.com/r/latin/ Lingua Latina: https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205 Playlist of someone reading out loud the chapters (plus some related material): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV We need to talk about Latinitas [re: criticizing Latin novellas]: https://foundinantiquity.com/2024/04/15/we-need-to-talk-about-latinitas/ Legentibus: https://latinitium.com/legentibus/

    33 min

  5. 25/04/2024

    14 - The 2024 Eclipse

    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 mic will mysteriously fail to work during their interview?

    1h 34m

  6. 20/11/2023

    13 - Aaron Silverbook on anti-cavity bacteria

    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's going on with the competitive landscape of mouth bacteria? How dangerous is it to colonize your mouth with a novel bacterium? Why hasn't this product been available for 20 years already? Lumina Probiotic (the brand name of this new type of bacterium): luminaprobiotic.com Lantern Bioworks (the company making the bacterium): lanternbioworks.com Jamie Wahls (Aaron's writing career): jamiewahls.com

    49 min

  7. 12/09/2023

    12 - Holly Elmore on AI pause

    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 relates to AI labs. The shift in the alignment community from proving things about alignment to messing around with ML models. Holly's X (twitter) account PauseAI discord

    1h 29m

  8. 28/04/2023

    11 - Divia Eden and Ronny Fernandez on the orthogonality thesis

    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 that predicts the future conditioned on some plans, and another that evaluates whether plans are good? If minds are made of smaller sub-agents with more primitive beliefs and desires, does that shape their terminal goals? Also, how would that even work? Which is cooler: rockets, or butterflies? What processes would make AIs terminally value integrity? Why do beavers build dams? Would these questions be easier to answer if we made octopuses really smart? Divia's twitter account: https://twitter.com/diviacaroline Divia's podcast: https://mutualunderstanding.substack.com/ Ronny's twitter account: https://twitter.com/RatOrthodox Arbital page for the orthogonality thesis: https://arbital.com/p/orthogonality/ Crystal Society: http://crystal.raelifin.com/ Video of a rescue beaver building a dam inside a human house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ImdlZtOU80 AIXI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI Kelly betting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

    2h 38m
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About

An interview podcast where I, Daniel Filan, interview guests about topics I'm interested in, with the aim of clarifying how the guest understands that topic.

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel Filan
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2022
  • Show Website
    The Filan Cabinet