Status quo bias appears to me to be pervasive in political discourse and legislating. In this thread we discuss the merits of Nick Bostrom's heuristic, the reversal test
(see original paper here) in detecting this bias. The original context is human enhancement, but the test can be applied in a wider variety of ways, including political debate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Bostrom
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.
In other words, if you oppose any changes to the status quo for a given issue, you're saying that the status quo is (at least locally) optimal. Why is the onus on you to give an explanation for this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Bostrom
The rationale of the Reversal Test is simple: if a continuous parameter admits of a wide range of possible values, only a tiny subset of which
can be local optima, then it is prima facie implausible that the actual
value of that parameter should just happen to be at one of these rare
local optima (fig. 1). This is why we claim that the burden of proof
shifts to those who maintain that some actual parameter is at such a
local optimum: they need to provide some good reason for supposing
that it is so.
It is very unlikely the status quo is (at least locally) optimal purely by chance. Thus, you need to give a good reason for what has driven the status quo to its current optimal state.
Bostrom gives several arguments for why certain states could be optimal. The most generally applicable are the "Argument from transition costs" and the "Arguments from risk".
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Here's an analysis of some political issues using the reversal test:
Global warming. If it is bad to increase the Earth's temperature, would it be good to
reduce the Earth's temperature? Doubtfully. If not, why do we assume Earth's current temperature is optimal? Downside risk is certainly a big component. Transition costs are also a good reason - there are a lot of sunk costs involved in settlements designed for the current climate. On the other hand, in the long run, these are less significant, as people migrate and build in newly hospitable places. So there's a good case for preferring the status quo climate, but it's perhaps not as strong as alleged.
Privatisation. I bring this up mainly because it's currently a big issue in New Zealand. If it's a bad idea for the government to sell assets, is it a good idea for the government to
buy more assets (i.e. nationalisation)? As far as I'm aware, few hold this viewpoint. I do not see any compelling reason to believe that governments have optimal allocations of assets, thus I'm inclined to believe that much opposition to privatisation is based on status quo bias.
Retirement Age. If it's a bad idea to raise the retirement age, is it thus a good idea to
reduce the retirement age? I've very rarely seen this view prescribed for any country. What reasons are there to believe the status quo is optimal then? Well, while it is true that people have based their working and saving decisions based on the status quo, all proposals to increase retirement ages that I've seen to date do so over a long time period, minimising the transition costs. And it just doesn't that likely that the magnitude of the costs of ex post inefficient savings decisions are going to be that large anyway. Thus, it looks like there's status quo bias here.
I know that this thread is begging to be hijacked into a debate about one of the above issues, so I beg of you to try to keep this into a discussion of the reversal test itself and not stray into generic debate.