2) I may have misunderstood, but I think these would fall under the third way of criticising EA I mentioned:
The third, and most promising option in my mind, is to accept that effective altruism as an idea is correct—accepting the general pond argument—but deny that effective altruism as a movement will succeed in doing a lot of good. Perhaps it’s just too hard to persuade people to do the right thing, or the current leaders of the movement will fail, or we’re bad at working out which actions are pond-like. Or perhaps there’s some much more important way of doing good that we should do instead.
But such a critique also falls under the second kind of critique that you said would be a “misfire”. Perhaps you meant that it’s a misfire only if the critic is trying to argue against ideal EA, but in my experience most critics are not trying to do that, they’re arguing against the EA movement.
1) I agree—I was speaking loosely.
2) I may have misunderstood, but I think these would fall under the third way of criticising EA I mentioned:
But such a critique also falls under the second kind of critique that you said would be a “misfire”. Perhaps you meant that it’s a misfire only if the critic is trying to argue against ideal EA, but in my experience most critics are not trying to do that, they’re arguing against the EA movement.