Yvain: I think you're equivocating between two definitions of utility, "happiness" and "the quantity that's maximized". This dual meaning is really unfortunate.

Sebastian: moral progress might be random except that people (very plausibly) try not to return to a rejected past state. This would be directionless (or move in an arbitrary direction) but produce very few reversals.

poke: pursuing knowledge could be painful and depressing but still intuitively moral.

I see a bit of what looks like terminal/instrumental confusion in this thread. I don't think discovering better instrumental values toward the same terminal values you always had counts as moral progress, at least if those terminal values are consciously, explicitly held.