The Reversal Test
If you oppose a proposed change to human cognition, would you also oppose the reverse change? If not, your objection may be tracking habit rather than principle.
Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord introduced the reversal test in 2006 as a diagnostic tool for applied ethics. It does not tell you what the right answer is. It reveals whether your objection to a proposed change rests on a principled position or on an unexamined preference for things as they are.
Bostrom, N., & Ord, T. (2006). The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics. Ethics, 116(4), 656–679.
The test
The reversal test works like this: if someone proposes increasing average human IQ through genetic intervention and you oppose it, ask whether you would support decreasing average IQ by the same mechanism. If you oppose both changes, you have a principled position and should be able to articulate what value you are protecting. If you oppose the increase but would also oppose the decrease, you need to explain why the current level is the right one. If you cannot, you are likely expressing status quo bias: a preference for things as they are that masquerades as a moral position.
Status quo bias is the tendency to treat the current state of affairs as a baseline with a special claim to legitimacy. What we have now is treated as neutral; departures from it require justification. But this framing is arbitrary. There is nothing morally privileged about present human cognitive capacity. It is the product of evolutionary pressures that had nothing to do with human flourishing.
Where the test works
The reversal test is most useful when applied to traits that seem genuinely neutral with respect to value. Consider pain sensitivity. If someone proposed reducing human pain sensitivity slightly, many people would object on precautionary grounds. But would those same people advocate for increasing pain sensitivity to its current level if we were proposing to decrease it? Almost certainly not. This asymmetry suggests the objection to reducing pain sensitivity is not really about pain's value but about discomfort with change.
The same pattern appears in debates about memory, mood, and concentration. Objectors who cannot specify what is valuable about current human baselines, and who would not advocate restoring those baselines if they were lost, are giving status quo bias a philosophical costume.
Where the test fails
The reversal test is not infallible. Some asymmetries between changes are principled, not biased. If a proposed enhancement carries high risks of irreversibility or systemic effects, opposing it while not opposing its reverse is not necessarily status quo bias. The risks are genuinely different. Enhancement toward greater capability may have different second-order effects than diminishment, even if the magnitude of the primary change is the same.
The test also does not adjudicate between competing values. If someone opposes cognitive enhancement because they believe it would deepen existing inequalities, the reversal test does not settle whether that concern is valid. It only checks whether the concern is symmetric, not whether it is correct.
Discussion questions
- If you would resist making yourself smarter, would you also resist making yourself less smart?
- Is resistance to cognitive enhancement principled or just status quo bias?
- What cognitive enhancement, if any, would you consider?
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