Level 1: Trying to deal with problems that cause human suffering.
Level 2: Using programs to help deal with those problems more effectively.
Level 3: Optimizing the way that those programs think and solve problems in general.
Level 4: Figure out better ways to think about programs that think, so that they are not only optimal at problem-solving, but also optimal at not killing us.
Level 5: Sharing essays on how we can be more rational about the level 4 problem without succumbing to bias.
Level 6: Commenting on those essays to support strong conclusions, question weak ones, and make them more memorable and effective by contributing to a community ethos.
Level 7: Upvoting my comment.
Thinking of Level 1 actions as maintenance is an excellent analogy.
This talk of swimming suggests another analogy for spending too much time on high level actions:
Overoptimizing is like trying to infer the properties of an optimal raft while you are drowning.