What makes the theory relativist is simply the fact that it refers explicitly to particular agents -- humans.
Unfortunately, it's not that easy. An agent, given by itself, doesn't determine preference. It probably does so to a large extent, but not entirely. There is no subject matter of "preference" in general. "Human preference" is already a specific question that someone has to state, that doesn't magically appear from a given "human". A "human" might only help (I hope) to pinpoint the question precisely, if you start in the general ballpark of what you'd want to ask.
I suspect that "Vague statement of human preference"+"human" is enough to get a question of "human preference", and the method of using the agent's algorithm is general enough for e.g. "Vague statement of human preference"+"babyeater" to get a precise question of "babyeater preference", but it's not a given, and isn't even expected to "work" for more alien agents, who are compelled by completely different kinds of questions (not that you'd have a way of recognizing such "error").
The reference to humans or babyeaters is in the method of constructing a preference-implementing machine, not in the concept itself. What humans are is not the info that compels you to define human preference in a particular way, although what humans are may be used as a tool in the definition of human preference, simply because you can pull the right levers and point to the chunks of info that go into the definition you choose.
[W]hy should we do what we prefer rather than what they prefer? The correct answer is, of course, "because that's what we prefer"
That's not a justification. They may turn out to do something right, where you were mistaken, and you'll be compelled to correct.
The reference to humans or babyeaters is in the method of constructing a preference-implementing machine, not in the concept itself.
Yes.
On Wei_Dai's complexity of values post, Toby Ord writes:
The kind of moral realist positions that apply Occam's razor to moral beliefs are a lot more extreme than most philosophers in the cited survey would sign up to, methinks. One such position that I used to have some degree of belief in is:
Strong Moral Realism: All (or perhaps just almost all) beings, human, alien or AI, when given sufficient computing power and the ability to learn science and get an accurate map-territory morphism, will agree on what physical state the universe ought to be transformed into, and therefore they will assist you in transforming it into this state.
But most modern philosophers who call themselves "realists" don't mean anything nearly this strong. They mean that that there are moral "facts", for varying definitions of "fact" that typically fade away into meaninglessness on closer examination, and actually make the same empirical predictions as antirealism.
Suppose you take up Eliezer's "realist" position. Arrangements of spacetime, matter and energy can be "good" in the sense that Eliezer has a "long-list" style definition of goodness up his sleeve, one that decides even contested object-level moral questions like whether abortion should be allowed or not, and then tests any arrangement of spacetime, matter and energy and notes to what extent it fits the criteria in Eliezer's long list, and then decrees goodness or not (possibly with a scalar rather than binary value).
This kind of "moral realism" behaves, to all extents and purposes, like antirealism.
I might compare the situation to Eliezer's blegg post: it may be that moral philosophers have a mental category for "fact" that seems to be allowed to have a value even once all of the empirically grounded surrounding concepts have been fixed. These might be concepts such as "would aliens also think this thing?", "Can it be discovered by an independent agent who hasn't communicated with you?", "Do we apply Occam's razor?", etc.
Moral beliefs might work better when they have a Grand Badge Of Authority attached to them. Once all the empirically falsifiable candidates for the Grand Badge Of Authority have been falsified, the only one left is the ungrounded category marker itself, and some people like to stick this on their object level morals and call themselves "realists".
Personally, I prefer to call a spade a spade, but I don't want to get into an argument about the value of an ungrounded category marker. Suffice it to say that for any practical matter, the only parts of the map we should argue about are parts that map-onto a part of the territory.