Hrrm ok. That is a different way of looking at it.

My take on the word is that the normal usage of better is by itself a context free comparator. The context of the comparison comes from the things around it (implicitly or explicitly) thus "UberClippy is better than Clippy" (implied: At being a Paperclipper), Manchester United is better than Leeds (implied: At playing football), or even "Betterness is better for humans than clippiness". I have no problem with "Betterness is more humane than clippiness".

Note that I don't think i'm disagreeing with Eliezer here. Fundamentally you are processing the logical concept with a static context, i process it with a local context. Either way it's highly unlikely that the context you hold or that i would derive would be the same as the paperclipper versions of ourselves (or indeed any given brain in potential brain space).