I love how this basically turns the paperclip optimizer on its head. Traditionally "optimizing paperclips" is seen as a metaphor for some useful industrial process and taking over the universe is seen as a catastrophe. But your argument is basically that humans are in the same situation except for us the paperclips are pointless and their only purpose is to motivate us to take over the universe.
The difference is paperclip optimizer's existence does not depend on the paperclips.
For any organism, being able to correctly read their subset of "reality" is the only thing that increases their chance of survival - and over time their genes. It is a genetic algorithm deeply tested against reality; there is no skirting around it.
Human consciousness is able extend projections into the future or to other humans and thus have a greater capacity for conformance to reality. It has horrible failure modes and room for self deception - nihilism being one - but even though this proliferation looks like the paper clip maximizer that was never the goal but the side effect. Now that we're tasting the unadaptive consequences of over-proliferation we will see how well our reality conforming machinery can overcome our collective self-deception modes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence