Perhaps reasoning about something like ‘causal measure’ would work, where you can just talk about ‘havoc’ as ‘large effect on agents at whatever seems the most germane level of organization’. ‘Intuitively intelligent’ but not goal-optimizing things will at least have a lot of causal significance, which I think is sufficient for this exercise. (Which is moving towards less formality, not more, so I’m not disputing your comment in any way.)
Perhaps reasoning about something like ‘causal measure’ would work, where you can just talk about ‘havoc’ as ‘large effect on agents at whatever seems the most germane level of organization’. ‘Intuitively intelligent’ but not goal-optimizing things will at least have a lot of causal significance, which I think is sufficient for this exercise. (Which is moving towards less formality, not more, so I’m not disputing your comment in any way.)