To the extent that we've made any progress at all, it's only because the societies that adopted truly terrible moral principles (e.g. communism) failed.
Communism isn't a truly terrible moral principle. It's just a moral principle that is naive and impractical as a political and economic solution given humanity as it is. A couple of elements that we would disparage as communist may actually be necessary in a post-human FAI enhanced universe in order to prevent a Hansonian hell.
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?