Hypothesis: whenever you make a choice, the consequences of it are almost as likely to be bad as good, because the scale of the intended consequences is radically smaller than the scale of the chaotic unintended effects. (The expected outcome is still as positive as you think, it’s just a small positive value plus a very high variance random value at each step.)
This seems different from how things are usually conceived, but does it change anything that we don’t already know about?
Could this be false?
I think the idea is that Huemer's quote seems to itself be an effort to repair society without fully understanding it.
I don't think this is a facile objection, either*—I think it's very possible that "Voters, activists, and political leaders" are actually an essential part of the complex mechanism of society and if they all stopped trying to remedy problems things would get even worse.
On the other hand, you can recurse this reasoning and say that maybe bold counterintuitive philosophical prescriptions like Huemer's are also part of the complex mechanism.
*To the quote as a standalone argument, anyway—haven't read the essay.