We should give everybody as much utilions as we can

Not at all. We're all just trying to maximize our own utilions. My utility function has a term int it for other people's happiness. Maybe it has a term for other people's utilions (I'm not sure about that one though). But when I say I want to maximize utility, I'm just maximizing one utility function: mine. Consideration for others is already factored in.

In fact I think you're confusing two different topics: decision theory and ethics. Decision theory tells us how to get more of what we want (inclu... (read more)

1. It seems that it is possible to compare happiness of two different people; ie I can say that giving the cake to Mary would give her twice as much happiness as it would give Fred. I think that's all you need to counter your first objection. You'd need something much more formal if you were actually trying to calculate it out rather than use it as a principle, but as far as I know no one does this.

2. This is a big problem. I personally solve it by not using utilitarianism on situations that create or remove people. This is an inelegant hack, but it works.

3. T

It seems that in the rationalist community there's almost universal acceptance of utilitarianism as basics of ethics.

I'd be interested to know if that's true. I don't accept utilitarianism as a basis for ethics. Alicorn's recent post suggests she doesn't either. I think quite a few rationalists are also libertarian leaning and several critiques of utilitarianism come from libertarian philosophies.

Do you want to be a wirehead?

Modern economy is just wonderful at mass producing utilons - we have orders of magnitude more utilons per person than our ancestors - and it doesn't really leave people that much happier.

Current research suggests it does:

The facts about income and happiness turn out to be much simpler than first realized:

1) Rich people are happier than poor people.

2) Richer countries are happier than poorer countries.

3) As countries get richer, they tend to get happier.

But my main problem is that there's very little evidence getting utilons is actually increasing anybody's happiness significantly.

If you give someone more utilons, and they do not get happier, you're doing it wrong by definition. Conversely, someone cannot get happier without acquiring more utilons by definition.

You've rejected a straw man. You're probably right to reject said straw man, but it doesn't relate to utilitarianism.

This reminds me of a talk by Peter Railton I attended several years ago. He described happiness as a kind of delta function: we are as happy as our difference from our set point, but we drift back to our set point if we don't keep getting new input. Increasing one's set point will make one "happier" in the way you seem to be using the word, and it's probably possible (we already treat depressed people, who have unhealthily low set points and are resistant to more customary forms of experiencing positive change in pleasure).

I think it's pretty clear we should have a term in our social utility function that gives value to complexity (of the universe, of society, of the environment, of our minds). That makes me more than just a preference utilitarian. It's an absolute objective value. It may even, with interpretation, be sufficient by itself.