When dealing with an effectiveness-focused movement, our adversaries are further incentivised to prevent concrete results. While other movements will have to be destroyed through pressure, an effectiveness-focused movement will easily go away if you just prove to them that they can be more effective elsewhere.
100. It’s handing control of your actions to anyone who can play your language game.
I think, for the reason you describe, it is most effective to commit to your campaigns. You do the critical thinking first, but eventually you have to actually do the plan and give it a chance to have realized impact. The fairweather people who want every object-level action they take to be defensible as the most effective possible thing (imo the dominant EA take atm) are the ones who are wrong about effectiveness—they can’t execute a real world, multi-step plan for impact.
Constantly switching paths and always taking the next step that looks most effective, including to your critics and enemies, is a way to maximize option value, not a way to accomplish any multi-step real world plan.
I will answer comments that ask sincerely for explanations of my worldview on this. I am aware there is a lot of evidence listing and dot-connecting I didn’t do here.