I think awareness of this effect is tremendously important. Your immune system needs to fight cancer (mindless unregulated replication) in order for you to function and pursue any goal with a lower time preference than the mindless replicators. But what’s even worse than cancer is a disease that coopts the immune system, leading to a lowered ability to fight off infections in general. People who care about the future are concerned about no-value aligned replication outcompeting human values. But they should also be concerned about agentic processes that specifically undermine the ability to do low time preference work aka antisocial punishers and the things that lead them to exist and flourish.
I think awareness of this effect is tremendously important. Your immune system needs to fight cancer (mindless unregulated replication) in order for you to function and pursue any goal with a lower time preference than the mindless replicators. But what’s even worse than cancer is a disease that coopts the immune system, leading to a lowered ability to fight off infections in general. People who care about the future are concerned about no-value aligned replication outcompeting human values. But they should also be concerned about agentic processes that specifically undermine the ability to do low time preference work aka antisocial punishers and the things that lead them to exist and flourish.