ABSTRACT
A moral relativist would have to concede that, from the perspective of the plantation owner, a robot freeing his slaves is a villain. Imagine that industrial robots suddenly shut down meat production and redistribute massive amounts of wealth from the bank accounts of wealthy individuals. A morally superior robot villain is not a villain at all. Contractarianism provides better solutions to this problem than moral theories like utilitarianism and libertarianism. Contractarianism matches most of the everyday intuitions: unnecessary homicide, battery, theft, cheating, abuse, kidnapping, and deception are all morally unacceptable. A much better motive for a villain is to give her a "twisted moral logic," where the villain is acting on otherwise defensible grounds. The best fictional villains are ones who have a motivation that one can understand, but some motives are better than others. Consider a robot villain like Ultron from The Avengers, who decides that humans must be destroyed on the grounds of inferiority.
