I don't get this explanation. Sure, a process can tend toward a certain result, without having an explicit representation of that result. But such tendencies often seem to be fragile. For example, a car engine homeostatically tends toward a certain idle speed. But take out one or all spark plugs, and the previously stable performance evaporates. Goals-as-we-know-them, by contrast, tend to be very robust. When a human being loses a leg, they will obtain a synthetic one, or use a wheelchair. That kind of robustness is part of what makes a very powerful agent scary, because it is intimately related to the agent's seeing many things as potential resources to use toward its ends.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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