In many ways, most EAs are extraordinarily smart, but in one way EAs are naive. The most well known EAs have stated that the goal of EA is to minimize suffering. I can't explain this well at all, but I'm certain that is not the cause or effect of altruism as I understand it.
Consider The Giver. Consider a world where everyone was high on opiates all the time. There is no suffering or beauty. Would you disturb it?
Considering this, my immediate reaction is to restate the goal of EA as maximizing the difference between happiness and suffering. This still seems naive. Happiness and suffering are so interwoven, I'm not sure this can be done. The disappointment from being rejected by a girl may help you come to terms with reality. The empty feeling in the pit of your stomach when your fantasy world crumbles motivates you to find something more fulfilling.
It's difficult to say. Maybe one of you can restate it more plainly. This isn't an argument against EA. This is an argument that while we probably do agree on what actions are altruistic--the criteria used to explain it are overly simplified.
I don't know if there is much to be gained by having criteria to explain altruism, but I am tired of "reducing suffering." I like to think about it more as doing what I can to positively impact the world--and using EA to maximize that positivity where possible. Because altruism isn't always as simple as where to send your money.
I actually would distribute the opiates, simply because doing so would currently be the only way to discontinue intolerably severe levels of suffering being endured daily by humans and non-human animals. If eliminating harms of such magnitude can be done in one-fell-swoop fashion, rather than by stretching out the process for decades, centuries or longer, that's a distinction that EAs should not just handwave. In a hypothetical world where no organism suffers in unspeakable ways, then sure, the opiates shouldn't be viewed as the go-to solution. But it's conditional.
Consider what the unconditional refusal to distribute the opiates entails, in the world as it actually is. It entails tolerating tradeoffs wherein the worst off are left to deal with more of the same (including the same gradual slow-paced reductions) so that others' positive desires can be realized, which wouldn't have been realized had the opiates package-deal kicked in.
Are you more concerned with the latter group's interests because the latter group makes up (arguably) a larger segment of the total population? Keep in mind that they are (we are) not enduring anything remotely close to famine & the like. If the shoe were on the other foot and we were in the worst-off category, we'd want the torture-level harms ended for us even if it could only be ended by way of opiates for all. That's how potent the suffering of the worst off is. Until this changes, I'm not prepared to approve any "Desires > Aversions" tradeoff and I don't think the average EA should be either.
Of course, this doesn't mean that crude hedonism should be viewed as the appropriate theory of wellbeing for humans. But that's because you can still get "Aversions > Desires" type priorities under non-hedonic preferentism.
Have you read The Giver? This is exactly the case they make. I tend to agree with the main character. I would rather have the beauty AND suffering as cause and effect than a world full of nothing but happiness. I'm not sure the latter is possible, but it also sounds incredibly depressing. Then again, the author was obviously biased when he wrote the story.