Seems to me like avoiding this fallacy is also basically the entire starting premise of Effective Altruism. For most broad goals like “reduce global poverty”, there are charities out there that are thousands of times more effective than other ones, so the less effective ones are the epsilons. Yes they are still “good”—sign(epsilon) is positive—but the opportunity cost (that dollar could have done >1000x more elsewhere) is unusually clear.
Seems to me like avoiding this fallacy is also basically the entire starting premise of Effective Altruism. For most broad goals like “reduce global poverty”, there are charities out there that are thousands of times more effective than other ones, so the less effective ones are the epsilons. Yes they are still “good”—sign(epsilon) is positive—but the opportunity cost (that dollar could have done >1000x more elsewhere) is unusually clear.