As is, every level is only useful insofar as it helps with lower levels. But Level 1 still isn't the ultimate goal. You don't live to do the dishes, and not – at least not necessarily – to work. I think this model should be extended by Level 0 actions, which are things that directly cause happiness (or, alternatively, whatever else your ultimate goal is in life). Level 1 is, I think solely, useful to provide you (or others) with more opportunities to do Level 0. Level 2 then is useful to help you with Level 1, etc, so everything stays the same. Your thoughts about how people do too few / too many actions on a certain level is also directly applicable to Level 0.

What is different is that all Level n actions now also have a Level 0 component, but I think that's useful to have since it corresponds to a real thing in the world that has previously not been covered. As an example, if you can do a Level 2 & 0 action (such as reading up on computer science which you enjoy doing) instead of a pure Level 0 action, then that should always be a good idea, even if there is a risk of low connectivity back to Levels 1 and 0.

Some people think that any value, if it is the only value, naturally tries to consume all available resources. Even if you explicitly make a satisficing, non-maximizing value (e.g. "make 1000 paperclips", not just "make paperclips"), a rational agent pursuing that value may consume infinite resources making more paperclips just in case it's somehow wrong about already having made 1000 of them, or in case some of the ones it has made are destroyed.

On this view, all values need to be able to trade off one another (which implies a common quantitative utility measurement). Even if it seems obvious that the chance you're wrong about having made 1000 paperclips is very small, and you shouldn't invest more resources in that instead of working on your next value, this needs to be explicit and quantified.

In this case, since all values inherently conflict with one another, all decisions (between actions that would serve different values) are moral decisions in your terms. I think this is a good intuition pump for why some people think all actions and all decisions are necessarily moral.

What they did was clearly wrong... but, at the same time, they did not know it, and that has relevance.

Consider; you are given a device with a single button. You push the button and a hamburger appears. This is repeatable; every time you push the button, a hamburger appears. To the best of your knowledge, this is the only effect of pushing the button. Pushing the button therefore does not make you an immoral person; pushing the button several times to produce enough hamburgers to feed the hungry would, in fact, be the action of a moral person.

The above paragraph holds even if the device also causes lightning to strike a different person in China every time you press the button. (Although, in this case, creating the device was presumably an immoral act).

So, back to the babyeaters; some of their actions were immoral, but they themselves were not immoral, due to their ignorance.

we want a rigorous, formal explanation of exactly how, when, and why you should or should not stick to your precommitment

Well, if we're designing an AI now, then we have the capability to make a binding precommitment, simply by writing code. And we are still in a position where we can hope for the coin to come down heads. So yes, in that privileged position, we should bind the AI to pay up.

However, to the question as stated, "is the decision to give up $100 when you have no real benefit from it, only counterfactual benefit, an example of winning?" I would still answer, "No, you don't achieve your goals/utility by paying up." We're specifically told that the coin has already been flipped. Losing $100 has negative utility, and positive utility isn't on the table.

Alternatively, since it's asking specifically about the decision, I would answer, If you haven't made the decision until after the coin comes down tails, then paying is the wrong decision. Only if you're deciding in advance (when you still hope for heads) can a decision to pay have the best expected value.

Even if deciding in advance, though, it's still not a guaranteed win, but rather a gamble. So I don't see any inconsistency in saying, on the one hand, "You should make a binding precommitment to pay", and on the other hand, "If the coin has already come down tails without a precommitment, you shouldn't pay."

If there were a lottery where the expected value of a ticket was actually positive, and someone comes to you offering to sell you their ticket (at cost price), then it would make sense in advance to buy it, but if you didn't, and then the winners were announced and that ticket didn't win, then buying it no longer makes sense.

Were the Babyeaters immoral before meeting humans?

If not, what would you like to call the thing we actually care about?

Observe the contents of RAM as it's changing?

I'm not 100% sure of the mechanism of said observations, but I'm assuming a real AI would be able to do things on a computer that we can't - much as we can easily recognise an object in an image.

My main source is lecture series towards which I linked above. The Newtonian worldview is presented as the lecture that follows after the one I linked.

This "imperial role" business is arguably a rival form of the idea, though Newton did in fact work for the Crown.

At the time the Crown was the head of the church in England.

Why do you think Newton's focus on new observations/experiments came from Cartesian ontology, when Newton doesn't wholly buy that ontology?

I'm saying the popes inadvertently created a separate concept of secular aspirations - often opposed to religious authorities, though not to God if he turns out to exist. This "imperial role" business is arguably a rival form of the idea, though Newton did in fact work for the Crown.

Why do you think that Newtons proposal of his method of science had something to do with desire for a secular ruler?

Even there, someone points out that Bacon wasn't big on math. I'll grant you I should give him more credit for a sensible conclusion on heat, and for encouraging experiments.

But Newton didn't propose a religious method for science, which is my point. Did you think I meant that the popes turned Dante atheist? What they did was give him a desire for a secular ruler and an "almost messianic sense of the imperial role".

That sort of thinking may have given rise to Descartes' science fiction, so to speak - secular aspirations which go beyond even a New Order of the Ages. So there are a few possible prerequisites for a scientific method. As for someone else writing one down, maybe; what we observe is that the best early formulation came from a brilliant freak.

Asking on StackExchange gives a variety of people before Newton: http://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/5275/was-isacc-newton-the-first-person-to-articulate-the-scientific-method-in-europe/5277#5277

Possibly, but I wouldn't say the popes started science by being terrible rulers, thereby creating a clearer distinction between religious and secular.

The main point is that if you buy the philosophic commitments of Descartes the hypothetico-deductive method is a straightforward conclusion. Newton might have expressed the method more clearly but various people moved in that directions once Descartes successfully argued against the old way.

True, but on the other hand humanity has been left alone for millions of years, so odds of some species conquering universe just after humans accidentally happen to meet them (while they are still very limited in size) seem low. If there would be nothing stopping such expansions, i would´ve expected seeing some species conquering universe millions or billions of years ago.

More developments on the vibratory mechanisms of consciousness: http://actu.epfl.ch/news/how-the-brain-produces-consciousness-in-time-slice/

The video is somewhat odd in that he claims Descartes had no problem with experiments, but I recall the philosopher proposing rules which contradicted experiments and hand-waving this by appealing to the impossibility of observing bodies in isolation.

In any case, Hakob does make clear that Descartes used a more Aristotelian method as a rhetorical device to persuade Aristotelians. (In effect, he proved the method of intuitive truth unreliable by producing a contradiction.) I don't believe his work includes any workable method you could use to do science, while Newton's rules for natural philosophy seem like an OK approximation.

From memory without Googling the studies I remember that there are studies that test whether having a "Black name" on a resume will change response rates and it does.

There are also those studies that suggest that blinding of piano players gender is required to remove a gender bias.

Do you have another read on the literature?

Legal does not mean "accepted". For us you could replace it with hugging: "Can I delay or prevent someone from getting from point A to point B by hugging them in the hallway? What if three people all decide they want to hug same person at once? Twelve people? A hundred?"

Most interaction between people is controlled by people losing social status when behaving wrong, and some mild violence (mostly pushing away) for more extreme misbehavior. Laws are only needed for really extreme cases.

Though I stand by my claim that he started it, unless you can point to someone else writing down a workable scientific method beforehand

Hakob Barseghyan teaches in his History and Philosophy of Science course that Descartes started it. The hypothetico-deductive method (what's commonly called the scientific method) is a result of the philosophic commitments of Descartes thought.