I felt the article was pretty concrete in saying exactly that,"crypto is bad ...". It didn't strike me as high level/ abstract at all.

I'm not the author, but there was a very prescient critique submitted to the EA criticism contest, that went underappreciated. https://medium.com/@sven_rone/the-effective-altruism-movement-is-not-above-conflicts-of-interest-25f7125220a5

UPDATE: actually I realised did specifically mention this critique as an example.

Hi Peter,

Is knowledge of/aptitude with CTMC common among actuaries? 

Yes, it's required learning for actuaries, they may just need to brush up on their lecture notes.

Also, have you considered doing some more work to apply it to ER with expert support? 

Absolutely. I think, before I embark on further work, I would really like to talk with cause prioritisers/grant-makers to confirm that they would have confidence in this kind of modelling, and to understand what kinds of outputs they would value.

Very much agree RE time-inhomogenous. Some people may see them as a bug (fair) but in many ways they are a feature. I've said in the post that CTMCs can help disagreeing X-Risk modellers understand the precise source of their disagreements (ie differing time-inhomogeneity assumptions).

Thank you for this. I think you're right.

I'll issue a correction.

I could only find one, Robert Menendez, with positions that might be deemed anti-crypto before the FTX collapse. He sponsored some anti-money laundering some bills taking aim against Russia, Venezuela, El Salvador https://www.coinbase.com/public-policy/legislative-portal/nj/senate/n6vBNOTG2gwWQ1c3jOQqn

A handful of these candidates have also become anti-crypto post-FTX collapse, and beginning to return/donate the money recevied from FTX/SBF.  Chuy Garcia is one example.

Is there any chance you could reconsider? This post is not about my personal politics, or advocacy about any political candidates.

It's about the perceived misuse of an EA-linked fund called Protect Our Future.

The diagonal entries are defined in another way. See the link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_rate_matrix#:~:text=In%20probability%20theory%2C%20a%20transition,Markov%20chain%20transitions%20between%20states.

Apologies, I could have made this clearer. It is only those diagonal entries which are allowed to be negative. In fact they must be negative (or zero).

Technically, the diagonal entries are transitions from state i to i (ie. they are not really transitions but rather a measurement of "retention"). You can think of the positive or negative sign as indicating if it is a measure of transitioning away from the state, or retention in the state. 

You and I have a very opposite reflection of the Sam Harris vs Ezra Klein fiasco.

I'd like to hear what you think about Klein's point that environmental factors explain may >100% of the black-white iq gap, and yet this is alien in the race realism discourse.  https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ALzE9JixLLEexTKSq/cea-statement-on-nick-bostrom-s-email?commentId=YN85c93DD3EiNLFfo

counterproductive for the goal of fighting racism to stake your case on scientific claims that could turn out to be false.

There is so much evidence at this point against race realism/ HBD. There is no possibility of it "could be false" without evoking some grand conspiracy. Can we never call it pseudoscience? My goal is to fight for scientific truth, not some anti-racist agenda. Check out Ben Jacob's great resources.