[dalbasal]

I think broad goals like "eliminating suffering" or "fighting poverty" tend to be in a hard to tackle middle ground.

We're better off approaching them either more broadly or more narrowly. IE, we can dedicate resources to tighter goals, like reducing childhood mortality... a horrendous thing that most people suffered for most of humanity. We really made a lot of progress on this.

Alternatively, we can think of it more broadly... advancing as a species, culture and society. In that sense, space travel is a good idea.

Tackling the elimination of suffering head on is likely to resolve to "be a politician/priest/lawyer" or somesuch.

In any case, I think the mistake is thinking of everything as competitive, at a broad level. Rather, people tend to see ambitious, "humanities' first" goals as competitive with "eliminating suffering" or other broad goals. It's rare to hear people think that sports or cinema are competitive with the elimination of suffering.