Aren't humans/biological life a counterexample? Simple bacteria are clearly maximizing agents, and cyanobacteria did infact almost destroy all life on earth by filling the entire planet with toxic oxygen.

We've known how to improve ourselves via selective breeding yet vanishingly few humans are proponents. We and other intelligent animals have a wide variety of goals, and even share food across species.

The evidence just doesn't seem to support this concept of Basic Drives. If anything, the evidence (and common sense) seems to suggest that the more intelligent the organism, the more easily and more often it ignores its basic drives.