It could be a useful framing. “Optimize” to some people may imply making something already good great, such as making the countries with the highest HDI even better, or helping emerging economies to become high income, rather than helping the more suffering countries to catch up to the happier ones. It could be viewed as helping a happy person become super happy and not a sad person to become happy. I know this narrow form of altruism isn’t your intention, I’m just saying that “optimize” does have this connotation. I personally prefer “maximally benefit/improve the world.” It’s almost the same as your expression but without the make-good-even-better connotation.
I think EA’s have always thought about impact of collective action but it’s just really hard, or even impossible to estimate how your personal efforts will further collective action and compare that to more predictable forms of altruism.
It could be a useful framing. “Optimize” to some people may imply making something already good great, such as making the countries with the highest HDI even better, or helping emerging economies to become high income, rather than helping the more suffering countries to catch up to the happier ones. It could be viewed as helping a happy person become super happy and not a sad person to become happy. I know this narrow form of altruism isn’t your intention, I’m just saying that “optimize” does have this connotation. I personally prefer “maximally benefit/improve the world.” It’s almost the same as your expression but without the make-good-even-better connotation.
I think EA’s have always thought about impact of collective action but it’s just really hard, or even impossible to estimate how your personal efforts will further collective action and compare that to more predictable forms of altruism.