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SarahC comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong
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This is a bit of a caricature of moderates - moderates who care about the issues may also be more aware of the details of the system, and of how any quick fix somewhere may screw things up somewhere else.
In my eyes, the distinction between experts and non-experts of a particular system (law, the economy, diplomacy, science, education, culture ...) is more important than the distinction between critics and those that accept the status quo. For pretty much any system, chances are there'll be people who think it's fine as it is, and people who think it should change. If all the experts are on one side, chances are it's right. If there are experts on both sides, [i]then[/i] it's them you should be listening to them.
Here I mean "experts" in a broad sense, of those who know about a system, about why it's like it is, about what changes have been tried and which ones would have which consequences. A problem is that often some well-respected "experts" know little about the issue (I just read an article by a French journalist writing about the singularuty, and some people who do know a lot about the system may not be seen as experts by the public. I don't think there's a better word though :P
So, if a "moderate" dismisses a radical who's just saying "something's wrong", it may not only be because he doesn't notice problems - it may be because he considers that the current situation is a carefully balanced compromise, and a feature of most successful compromises is "everybody is unsatisfied, but by the same amount". So someone merely saying he's unsatisfied is normal and expected.
To take a simplified example, imagine a country where people are taxed X%, and the money is directly used for various government services - roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. X was decided by bureaucrats after making a lot of simulations and surveys about what would work best. Of course, there will be people saying the taxes are too high, and people complaining that there aren't enough government services, but that is to be expected, and adds zero new information. What [i]does[/i] add information is understanding the simulations of the bureaucrats, and either finding improvements or finding that some bureaucrats falsified the calculations to get more services near where they lived.
You're right -- it was a caricature, and it wasn't entirely fair.
I think your view of compromise is accurate.
But I want to complicate it a little. It may be true that there's a carefully balanced compromise, making everyone unhappy by the same amount, such that making a change really would make the system fall apart, with possibly disastrous results. The first thing I want to say is that someone who sees this "balance" may make a sort of mental shorthand and call it a good solution or a solved problem, and lose the acute awareness of grievance from the various unhappy parties. The moderate may eventually cease to recognize the grievances as even slightly legitimate. (I have seen this happen.) And this is a genuine fallacy.
The second thing I want to say is that the state of slavery in the 1850's was also a delicately balanced compromise, and disturbing it did have disastrous results. I'm not saying this to discredit your argument with a smear. My point is this: it may add zero new information to know that some people are unhappy with the status quo, but it does add information to know what their reasoning is for being unhappy. The content of abolitionist propaganda, the strength of its arguments as compared to those of pro-slavery propaganda, would sway a Martian observer trying to decide what he thought about slavery. If the Martian had only been allowed to see election numbers, poll results, legislative deliberations, and so on, he might have had a different opinion than if he had also been shown a few issues of The Liberator. In other words: the structure of a compromise is not enough to know whether you support it or not.
Heh, I was actually considering that exact example while writing my post, but considered it was already getting too long - so I don't see that as a smear :)
I'm not aiming for a Fully General Counterargument against disturbing the status quo, just presenting some more refined reasons moderates could have for supporting it. And slavery in the 19th century is a good example of a case where (as you say) those arguments did hold, but things were still worth changing.
This is so not a debate I'd want a Martian to adjudicate. How would a Martian evaluate questions like this:
I guess a Martian could try to evaluate some empirical questions that may be relevant:
But I fear the Martians will bring their own criteria into play. Those might be anything. Say: