...and actually, I’m not even really sure it’s best to think of “shards” as having goals, either long-term or short-term
Agreed; I was speaking loosely. (One line of reasoning there goes: shards are contextually activated heuristics; heuristics can be viewed as having been optimized for achieving some goal; inspecting shards (via e. g. self-reflection) can lead to your “reverse-engineering” those implicitly encoded goals; therefore, shards can be considered “proto-goals/values” of a sort, and complex patterns of shard activations can draw the rough shape of goal-pursuit.)
Agreed; I was speaking loosely. (One line of reasoning there goes: shards are contextually activated heuristics; heuristics can be viewed as having been optimized for achieving some goal; inspecting shards (via e. g. self-reflection) can lead to your “reverse-engineering” those implicitly encoded goals; therefore, shards can be considered “proto-goals/values” of a sort, and complex patterns of shard activations can draw the rough shape of goal-pursuit.)