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 think your argument is actually two: 1) It is not obvious how to maximize happiness, and some obvious-seeming strategies to maximize happiness will not in fact maximize happiness. 2) you shouldn't maximize happiness
(1) is true, I think most EAs agree with it, most people in general agree with it, I agree with it, and it's pretty unrelated to (2). It means maximizing happiness might be difficult, but says nothing about whether it's theoretically the best thing to do.
Relatedly, I think a lot of EAs agree that it is sometimes indeed the fact that to maximize happiness, we must incur some suffering. To obtain good things, we must endure some bad. Not realizing that and always avoiding suffering would indeed have bad consequences. But the fact that that is true, and important, says nothing about whether it is good. It is the case now that eating the food I like most would make me sick, but doesn't tell me whether I should modify myself to enjoy healthier foods more, if I was able to do so.
Put differently, is the fact that we must endure suffering to get happiness sometimes good in itself, or is it an inconvenient truth we should (remember, but) change, if possible? That's a hard question, and I think it's easy to slip into the trap of telling people they are ignoring a fact about the world to avoid hard ethical questions about whether the world can and should be changed.
I agree that points 1 and 2 are unrelated, but I think most people outside EA would agree that a universe of happy bricks is bad. (As I argued in a previous post, it's pretty indistinguishable from a universe of paperclips.) This is one problem that I (and possibly others) have with EA.