General Kurt's link goes to Hanlon.

What's more internal than wireheading?

komponisto, we can leave aside the question of whether moral progress is possible or actual and focus on why we should expect it to be associated with technological progress. We can easily see that in the middle ages people were trying to create tougher armor and more powerful weaponry. Ethically, they seem to strive to be more obedient Christians. That includes setting as a goal things that many of us today consider IMMORAL. Rather than hoping for progress along that axis, many instead thought that mankind was Fallen from an earlier golden age and if anything sought to turn the clock back (that is how the early Protestants and Puritans viewed themselves). It was never the case that anybody simply made moral discoveries that were simply proven to all who would listen, as in Eliezer's silly example of At'gra'len'ley. It was often the case that two sides considered each other immoral and one of them outcompeted the other militarily and shut up its propagandists. For what reason should we think it most likely that the victor actually was more moral?

Were the people burning cats really trying to become non-cat-burners? Wasn't slavery viewed as divinely ordained for some time?

Regarding the Germans: winners write the history books. That is why the Soviet Union is not the anathema that Nazi Germany is to us today. If the Germans had won we would not consider them quite so evil. Technological advancement aids in winning wars.

komponisto, as a non-cognitivist I don't find the notion of moral "progress" to be meaningful, and I'd like to hear your argument for why we should expect some sort of empirical correlation between it and, say, technological advancement (which gives the overwhelming power that in turn makes genocide possible).

I'm an atheist who likes singing Song of Hope in church. I'd like to be a wirehead (or enter Nozick's experience machine). I don't know of any reason to delay becoming a superintelligence unless being a wirehead is the alternative.

The Indians were in large part killed by disease introduced by English fishermen. That's why Plymouth was relatively depopulated when the Pilgrims arrived and the Mound-Building Civilization collapsed without ever coming into contact with Europeans.

There is nothing oxymoronic about calling democracy "the tyranny of the majority". And George Washington himself was decisive in both the violent war of secession called a "revolution" that created a new Confederate government and the unlawful replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, after which he personally crushed the Whiskey Rebellion of farmers resisting the national debt payments saddled upon them by this new government. Even MLK has been characterized as implicitly threatening more riots if his demands were not met (in that respect he followed Gandhi, who actually justified violence on the basis of nationalism though this is not as well remembered). Eliezer is mashing applause lights.

The Austrians say that economics can only tell us qualitative rather than quantitative things. That's part of why many people don't take them seriously.

Let us know how it turns out. I haven't admitted it to anyone in meatspace yet. Fortunately I'm not married and my family isn't extremely religious.

"And you wonder why you don't have any political influence." I think the more obvious reason is small numbers.