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steven0461 comments on Human errors, human values - Less Wrong
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Maybe I'm misreading this exchange, but there seems to be some confusion between individual utility functions and utilitarianism as an ethical system. An individual utility function as per von Neumann and Morgenstern is defined only up to a constant term and multiplication by a positive factor. Individual vN-M utility functions therefore cannot be compared, aggregated, or averaged across individuals, which is what any flavor of utilitarianism requires one way or another (and which invariably leads into nonsense, in my opinion).
It's only preference utilitarianism that aggregates individual vN-M utility functions. Other kinds of utilitarianism can use other measures of quality of life, such as pleasure minus pain; these measures have their own difficulties, but they don't have this particular difficulty.
You're right, it's not true that all sorts of utilitarianism require aggregation of vN-M utility functions. That was an imprecise statement on my part. However, as far as I can tell, any sort of utilitarianism requires comparing, adding, or averaging of some measure of utility across individuals, and I'm not aware of any such measure for which this is more meaningful than for the vN-M utility functions. (If you know of any examples, I'd be curious to hear them.)