If reversing a proposed change also seems bad, the objection is probably status quo bias rather than reasoning.
Bostrom and Ord's 2006 test. Applied to cognitive enhancement: if raising intelligence is bad and lowering it is also bad, the current level must be optimal, and that needs an argument nobody has.
In practice
- A council that will neither raise nor lower the limit on a road it has never surveyed is asserting that the present figure is right by accident.
- A team that opposes both lengthening and shortening the sprint has revealed that the objection is to changing it.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Razors, rules and the tools of careful thought