I think it would help a lot to provide people with examples. For example, here
Many machine learning research agendas for safety are investigating issues identified years earlier by foundational research, and are at least partly informed by that research.
You say that, but then don’t provide any examples. I imagine readers just not thinking of any, and then moving on without feeling any more convince.
Overall, I think that it’s hard for people to believe agent foundations will be useful because they’re not visualizing any compelling concrete path where it makes a big difference.
Unrelatedly, why not make this a cross-post rather than a link-post?