Arguing for and against the status quo

Here is a useful test to help reason about an issue. It comes from Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord's The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics, published in Etthics 116 (2006). It comes to me via Nicholas Agar's Humanity's End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement.

Reversal Test: When a proposal to change a certain parameter is thought to have bad overall consequences, consider a change to the same parameter in the opposite direction. If this is also thought to have bad overall consequences then the onus is on those who reach these conclusions to explain why our position cannot be improved through changes to this parameter. If they are unable to do so, then we have reason to suspect that they suffer from status quo bias.

This is a useful way to approach status quo conservatism or bias. If a group are resistant to a certain change, e.g. human intelligence enhancement, then the parameter should be flipped. Is the group resistant to change in the opposite direction, e.g. human intelligence degradation? This teases out if the opposition to the proposal are against the direction of change, or change itself. If they appear to be against any sort of change, then they need to be able to advance a case as to why the current value of the parameter is considered to be good/ideal and should not be changed.

I think it can also be used as a useful defence against charges that a group is being resistant to change. In these instances the parameter should be flipped. Is movement in the opposite direction desirable? If so, then the group aren't resistant to change, they're resistant to a specific (perceived) undesirable change that degrades the situation.