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What happens then when a non-thinking thing feels happy? Is that happiness valued? To whom? Or do you think this is impossible?

When a baby feels happy, it feels happy. Nothing else happens. 

There are differences among wanting, liking, and endorsing [LW · GW] something. 

A happy blob may like feeling happy, and might even feel a desire to experience more of it, but it cannot endorse things if it doesn't have agency. Human fulfillment and wellbeing typically involves some element of all three. 

An unthinking being cannot value even its own happiness, because the concept traditionally meant by "values" refers to the goals that an agent points itself at, and an unthinking being isn't agentic - it does not make plans to steer the world in any particular direction. 

Then if you also say that happiness is good, and that good implies value, one must ask, who or what is valuing the happiness? The rock? The universe? 

I am. When I say "happiness is good", this is isomorphic with "I value happiness". It is a statement about the directions in which I attempt to steer the world. 

Like there must be some physical process by which happiness is valued. Maybe a dimension by which emotional value is expressed?

The physical process that implements "valuing happiness" is the firing of neurons in a brain. It could in theory be implemented in silicon as well, but it's near-certainly not implemented by literal rocks. 

something that is challenging, and requires a certain kind of problem solving, where the solution is beautiful in some way

Yep, that makes sense. I notice, however, that these things do not appear to be emotions. And that's fine! It is okay to innately value things that are not emotions! Like "having a model of the world that is as accurate as possible", i.e. truth-seeking. Many people (especially here on LW) value knowledge for its own sake. There are emotions associated with this goal, but the emotions are ancillary. There are also instrumental reasons to seek truth, but they don't always apply. The actual goal is "improving one's world-model" or something similar. It bottoms out there. Emotions need not apply. 

The key piece though is that regardless, as tslarm says, "emotions are accompanied by (or identical with, depending on definitions) valenced qualia". They always have some value.

First off, I'm not wholly convinced this is true. I think emotions are usually accompanied by valenced qualia, but (as with my comments about curiosity) not necessarily always. Sure, if you define "emotion" so that it excludes all possible counterexamples, then it will exclude all possible counterexamples, but also you will no longer be talking about the same concept as other people using the word "emotion". 

Second, there is an important difference between "accompanied by valenced qualia" and "has value". There is no such thing as "inherent value", absent a thinking being to do the evaluation. Again, things like values and goals are properties of agents; they reflect the directions in which those agents steer. 

Finally, more broadly, there's a serious problem with terminally valuing only the feeling of emotions. Imagine a future scenario: all feeling beings are wired to an enormous switchboard, which is in turn connected to their emotional processors. The switchboard causes them to feel an optimal mixture of emotions at all times (whatever you happen to think that means) and they experience nothing else. Is this a future you would endorse? Does something important seem to be missing? 

What about the following red team strategy:

Give an honest assessment of the suspicion level, unless there is a very well hidden backdoor, then give a low score. Also, only create backdoors if it is possible to hide them well.

Wouldn't this defeat the self-checking strategy?

Having preferenes is very different from knowing them. There's always a process of reflection that refines preferences, so any current guess is always wrong at least in detail. For a decision theory to have a shot at normativity, it needs to be able to adapt to corrections and ideally anticipate their inevitability (not locking in the older guess and preventing further reflection; instead facilitating further reflection and being corrigible).

Orthogonality asks the domain of applicability to be wide enough that both various initial guesses and longer term refinements to them won't fall out of scope. When a theory makes assumptions about value content, that makes it a moral theory rather than a decision theory. A moral theory explores particular guesses about preferences of some nature.

So in the way you use the term, quantum immortality seems to be a moral theory, involving claims that quantum suicide can be a good idea. For example "use QI to earn money" is a recommendation that depends on this assumption about preferences (of at least some people in some situations).

What’s the payout of this model? I’m highly skeptical of any metaphor from Ayn Rand, so drawing comparisons to her ideas doesn’t add any insight for me. If I’m just not that target audience, that’s cool.

Orthogonality between goals and DT makes sense only if I don't have preferences about the type of DT or the outcomes which one of them necessitates.

In the case of QI, orthogonality works if we use QI to earn money or to care about relatives.

However, humans have preferences about existence and non-existence beyond normal money utility. In general, people strongly don't want to die. It means that I have a strong preference that some of my copies survive anyway, even if it is not very useful for some other preferences under some other DT.

Another point is the difference between Quantum suicide and QI. QS is an action, but QI is just a prediction of future observations and because of that it is less affected by decision theories. We can say that those copies of me who survive [high chance of death event] will say that they survived because of QI.

You're putting quite a lot of weight on what "mathematicians say". Probably these people just haven't thought very hard about it?

I somewhat disagree with Tenobrus' commentary about Wolfram.

I watched the full podcast, and my impression was that Wolfram uses a "scientific hat", of which he is well aware of, which comes with a certain ritual and method for looking at new things and learning them. Wolfram is doing the ritual of understanding what Yudkowsky says, which involves picking at the details of everything.

Wolfram often recognizes that maybe he feels like agreeing with something, but "scientifically" he has a duty to pick it apart. I think this has to be understood as a learning process rather than as a state of belief.

check out exhibit 13...

As they describe in the report, the philosophical assumptions are mostly inconsequential and assumed  for simplicity.  The rest of your critique is just describing what they did, not an objection to it.  It's not precise and they admit quite high uncertainty, but it's definitely better than alternatives (E.g. neuron counts). 

I'm a bit torn regarding the "predicting how others react to what you say or do, and adjust accordingly" part. On the one hand this is very normal and human and makes sense. It's kind of predictive empathy in a way. On the other hand, thinking so very explicitly about it and trying to steer your behavior in a way so as to get the desired reaction out of another person also feels a bit manipulative and inauthentic. If I knew another person would think that way and plan exactly how they interacted with me, I would find that quite off-putting. But maybe the solution is just "don't overdo it", and/or "only use it in ways the other person would likely consent to" (such as avoiding to accidentally say something hurtful).