This is a linkpost for http://putanumonit.com/2016/10/06/theory-of-an-immoral-sentiment/
I don't believe a CEV exists or, if it does, that I would like it very much. Both were poorly supported assumptions of the CEV paper. For related reasons, as the Wiki says, "Yudkowsky considered CEV obsolete almost immediately after its publication in 2004". I'm not sure why people keep discussing CEV (Nick Tarleton, and other links on the Wiki page) but I assume there are good reasons.
One could do this same calculation for all other values, and add them up to get CEV,
That doesn't sound like CEV at all. CEV is about extrapolating new values which may not be held by any actual humans. Not (just) about summing or averaging the values humans already hold.
Getting back to happiness: it's easy to say we should increase happiness, all else being equal. It's not so obvious that we should increase it at the expense of other things, or by how much. I don't think happiness is substantially different in this case from morality.
Thanks for letting me know that CEV is obsolete. I'll have to look into the details. However, I don't think our disagreement is in that area.
it's easy to say we should increase happiness, all else being equal. It's not so obvious that we should increase it at the expense of other things
Agreed, but the argument works just as well for decreasing happiness as for possible increases. Even someone who valued their own happiness 1000x more than that of others would still prefer to suffer than for 1001 people to suffer. If they also value their own life 1000x...