less is also a common UNIX program going back decades

Aliases shouldn't interfere with shell scripts unless you do something very silly. They're shell-local, and typically you define them in your shell's interactive-initialization file (e.g. .bashrc, .zshrc).

Right, but it will break my ability to "| more" on the command line in my interactive shell.

If there is an executable, it can be named 'morec' after less CSS' 'lessc'