You might be interested in checking out a GPI paper which argues the same thing as your second point: The Scope of Longtermism
Here’s the full conclusion:
This paper assessed the fate of ex ante swamping ASL: the claim that the ex ante best thing we can do is often a swamping longtermist option that is near-best for the long-term future. I gave a two-part argument that swamping ASL holds in the special case of present-day cause-neutral philanthropy: the argument from strong swamping that a strong swamping option would witness the truth of ASL, and the argument from single-track dominance for the existence of a strong swamping option.
However, I also argued for the rarity thesis that swamping longtermist options are rare. I gave two arguments for the rarity thesis: the argument from rapid diminution that probabilities of large far-future benefits often diminish faster than those benefits increase; and the argument from washing out that probabilities of far-future benefits are often significantly cancelled by probabilities of far-future harms.
I argued that the rarity thesis does not challenge the case for swamping ASL in present day, cause-neutral philanthropy, but showed how the rarity thesis generates two challenges to the scope of swamping ASL beyond this case. First, there is the area challenge that swamping ASL often fails when we restrict our attention to specific cause areas. Second, there is the challenge from option unawareness that swamping ASL often fails when we modify decision problems to incorporate agents’ unawareness of relevant options.
In some ways, this may be familiar and comforting news. For example, Greaves (2016) considers the cluelessness problem that we are often significantly clueless about the ex ante values of our actions because we are clueless about their long-term effects. Greaves suggests that although cluelessness may be correct as a description of some complex decisionmaking problems, we should not exaggerate the extent of mundane cluelessness in everyday decisionmaking. A natural way of explaining this result would be to argue for a strengthened form of the rarity thesis on which in most mundane decisionmaking, the expected long-term effects of our actions are swamped by their expected short-term effects. So in a sense, the rarity thesis is an expected and comforting result.
In addition, this discussion leaves room for swamping ASL to be true and important in the case of present-day, cause-neutral philanthropy as well as in a limited number of other contexts. It also does not directly pronounce on the fate of ex-post versions of ASL, or on the fate of non-swamping, convergent ASL. However, it does suggest that swamping versions of ASL may have a more limited scope than otherwise supposed.
You might be interested in checking out a GPI paper which argues the same thing as your second point: The Scope of Longtermism
Here’s the full conclusion: