DanielLC comments on Hedonic vs Preference Utilitarianism in the Context of Wireheading - Less Wrong Discussion
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Most people would strongly desire to not be modified in such a fashion. It's really no different from wire-heading them to be happy, you're destroying their terminal values, essentially killing a part of them.
Of course, you could take this further by agreeing to leave existing people's preferences alone, but from now on only create people who desire what is currently true. This seems rather horrible as well, what it suggests to me is that there are some people with preference sets that it is morally better to create than others. It is probably morally better to create human beings with complex desires than wireheaded creatures that desire only what is true.
This in turn suggests to me that, in the field of population ethics, it is ideal utilitarianism that is the correct theory. That is, there are certain ideals it is morally good to promote (love, friendship, beauty, etc.) and that therefore it is morally good to create people with preferences for those things (i.e. creatures with human-like preferences).
Yes, but only until they're modified. The desire fulfillment of their future selves will outweigh the desire unfulfillment of their present selves, resulting in a net increase in desire fulfillment.
One way this is typically resolved is something called the "prior existence view." This view considers it good to increase the desire fulfillment of those who already exist, and those who will definitely exist in the future, but does not necessarily grant extra points for creating tons of new desires and then fulfilling them. The prior-existence view would therefore hold that it is wrong to create or severely modify a person if doing so would inflict an unduly large disutility on those who would exist prior to that person's creation.
The prior-existence view captures many strong moral intuitions, such as that it is morally acceptable to abort a fetus to save the life of the mother, and that it is wrong to wirehead someone against their will. It does raise some questions, like what to do if raising the utility of future people will change their identity, but I do not think these are unresolvable.