Reversal test

The reversal test is a heuristic designed to spot and eliminate status quo bias, an emotional bias irrationally favouring the current state of affairs. The test is applicable to the evaluation of any decision involving a potential deviation from the status quo along some continuous dimension. The reversal test was introduced in the context of the bioethics of human enhancement by Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord.

Reversal test

Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord introduced the reversal test as to provide a general answer to the question of how one can, given that humans might suffer from irrational status quo bias, distinguish between valid criticisms of a proposed increase in some human trait and criticisms merely motivated by resistance to change. The reversal test attempts to do this by asking whether it would be a good thing if the trait was decreased.

An example given is that if someone objects to enhancement of human intelligence on the grounds that it might e.g. allow for more sophisticated weapons to emerge, to which the objector may ask in turn: "shouldn't we decrease intelligence then?" The later suggestion is more easily read as a reductio of the former, and ideally the test will help reveal whether status quo bias was an important causal factor in the formation of the initial judgment.

Double reversal test

A further elaboration on the reversal test is suggested as the double reversal test:

"Double Reversal Test: Suppose it is thought that increasing a certain parameter and decreasing it would both have bad overall consequences. Consider a scenario in which a natural factor threatens to move the parameter in one direction and ask whether it would be good to counterbalance this change by an intervention to preserve the status quo. If so, consider a later time when the naturally occurring factor is about to vanish and ask whether it would be a good idea to intervene to reverse the first intervention. If not, then there is a strong prima facie case for thinking that it would be good to make the first intervention even in the absence of the natural countervailing factor." (p. 673)

As an example, consider the parameter to be life expectancy, moving in the downward direction because of a sudden natural disease. We might intervene to invest in better health infrastructure to preserve the current life expectancy. Now if the disease is cured, the double reversal test asks: should we reverse our investment and defund the health services we created since the disease, now that it's gone? If not, perhaps we should invest in health infrastructure even if there never is a disease in the first place.

In this case the status quo bias is turned against itself, greatly reducing its impact on the reasoning. It also purports to handle arguments of evolutionary adaptation, transition costs, risk, and societal ethics that can counter the other test.

Criticism

Alfred Nordmann argues that the reversal test merely erects a straw-man argument in favour of enhancement. He claims that the tests are limited to approaches that are consequentialist and deontological. He adds that one cannot view humans as sets of parameters that can be optimized separately or without regard to their history.

Christian Weidemann argues that the double reversal test can muddy the water; guaranteeing and weighing transition costs versus benefits might be the relevant practical ethical question for much human enhancement analysis.