I learned that library() conflicts can occur when functions in two different packages have the same name, and in such cases, the functions from the last package loaded are the ones RStudio will use.
Does that mean when I get this notice of conflict with dplyr's filter function when loading tidyverse, I need to next load dplyr on its own, after loading tidyverse?
The warning is telling you that dplyr::filter() is masking the base R function stats::filter() so no need to do anything else. Have in mind that filer() comes from dplyr not from tidyverse, the latest is just an aggregator for a family of packages that get loaded together.