The sources you cited don't seem to support your definition, but rather use the sort more well known to ethicists. The one on Wikipedia does a good enough job:
Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people
That is, it doesn't suggest what people actually do strive for, nor does it suggest that people are after their own happiness. Rather, it's an ethical theory for which the following are true:
Of course, there are variations on Utilitarianism and different ideas of what 'utility' means (Jeremy Bentham believed more pleasure / less pain summed it up). But they're all variants on this theory.
The theory that each person only ever pursues what leads to their own happiness is commonly called 'psychological hedonism', and is of questionable worth since it's usually presented in a nonfalsifiable fashion.
Hello,
I did not mean to imply that people generally seek their own happiness over the greater good for all. Nor did I mean to imply that there was a dichotomy between the two at all.
I keep alluding to people pursuing what they "perceive" as "most likely" bringing happiness. I tend to see people's perceptions as to what can make them happy as being inspired by their social and cultural influences --- Family, friends, lovers, associates, religion, economic and political views, social upbringing, etc.
But I do see what you're saying --- and...
Disclaimer: If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you.
For your convenience, links to followup posts: Roko says; orthonormal says; Eliezer says; Yvain says; Wei_Dai says
As far as I can tell, I am the most active female poster on Less Wrong. (AnnaSalamon has higher karma than I, but she hasn't commented on anything for two months now.) There are not many of us. This is usually immaterial. Heck, sometimes people don't even notice in spite of my girly username, my self-introduction, and the fact that I'm now apparently the feminism police of Less Wrong.
My life is not about being a girl. In fact, I'm less preoccupied with feminism and women's special interest issues than most of the women I know, and some of the men. It's not my pet topic. I do not focus on feminist philosophy in school. I took an "Early Modern Women Philosophers" course because I needed the history credit, had room for a suitable class in a semester when one was offered, and heard the teacher was nice, and I was pretty bored. I wound up doing my midterm paper on Malebranche in that class because we'd covered him to give context to Mary Astell, and he was more interesting than she was. I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primary. Given the choice, I have lots of things I'd rather be doing than ferreting out hidden or less-than-hidden sexism on one of my favorite websites.
Unfortunately, nobody else seems to want to do it either, and I'm not content to leave it undone. I suppose I could abandon the site and leave it even more masculine so the guys could all talk in their own language, unimpeded by stupid chicks being stupidly offended by completely unproblematic things like objectification and just plain jerkitude. I would almost certainly have vacated the site already if feminism were my pet issue, or if I were more easily offended. (In general, I'm very hard to offend. The fact that people here have succeeded in doing so anyway without even, apparently, going out of their way to do it should be a great big red flag that something's up.) If you're wondering why half of the potential audience of the site seems to be conspicuously not here, this may have something to do with it.
So can I get some help? Some lovely people have thrown in their support, but usually after I or, more rarely, someone else sounds the alarm, and usually without much persistence or apparent investment. There is still conspicuous karmic support for some comments that perpetuate the problems, which does nothing to disincentivize being piggish around here - some people seem to earnestly care about the problem, but this isn't enforced by the community at large, it's just a preexisting disposition (near as I can tell).
I would like help reducing the incidence of:
We could use more of the following:
Thank you for your attention and, hopefully, your assistance.