Please clarify: do you think there's some objective external standard or goal, according to which we've been progressing in some areas and regressing in others?
If you're aware of what that goal is, why haven't you adopted it as your personal morals, achieving 100% progression?
If you're not aware of what it is, why do you think it exists and what do you know about it?
To me the word "morality" means the philosophy underlying the social contract. The goal is human well-being. When I say we've regressed in some areas, I mean that we've modified the social contract in ways that are harmful to human well-being.
To make the terms concrete, consider the case of communism. Clearly this was a drastic revision of the social contract with disastrous consequences for human well-being. The revision was justified by a certain set of moral values that turned out to be far inferior to the more traditional ones.
Taken from some old comments of mine that never did get a satisfactory answer.
1) One of the justifications for CEV was that extrapolating from an American in the 21st century and from Archimedes of Syracuse should give similar results. This seems to assume that change in human values over time is mostly "progress" rather than drift. Do we have any evidence for that, except saying that our modern values are "good" according to themselves, so whatever historical process led to them must have been "progress"?
2) How can anyone sincerely want to build an AI that fulfills anything except their own current, personal volition? If Eliezer wants the the AI to look at humanity and infer its best wishes for the future, why can't he task it with looking at himself and inferring his best idea to fulfill humanity's wishes? Why must this particular thing be spelled out in a document like CEV and not left to the mysterious magic of "intelligence", and what other such things are there?