I've linkified the grandparent a bit - for those not familiar with the ideas.

The main idea is that many agents which are serious about attaining their long term goals will first take control of large quantities of spactime and resources - before they do very much else - to avoid low-utility fates like getting eaten by aliens.

Such goals represent something like an attractor in ethics-space. You could avoid the behaviour associated with the attractor by using discounting, or by adding constraints - at the expense of making the long-term goal less likely to be attained.