Status quo bias is a cognitive bias which makes a person prefer to maintain the current state of affairs simply because other states of affairs would be different. (Henceforth, I will use the abbreviation "SOA" for "state of affairs").
Suppose the costs of changing the current SOA are high enough to offset any advantage a different SOA may have over the current one. Suppose that, for this reason, somebody prefers to keep the current state of affairs. Their preference is, importantly, not an instance of status quo bias. Status quo bias occurs when it would be rational, all things considered, to change the current SOA, and yet a person prefers to keep it, simply because it is the current one.
To overcome status quo bias, it can sometimes be useful to completely ignore the costs of making changes. Once we identify an optimal SOA, we can ask: are the costs of bringing about this SOA really so high as to justify maintaining the status quo?
Now, if there are no costs to making changes, then the answer to
i) Should I bring about SOA1, given the current state of affairs SOA2?
ii) Should I bring about SOA2, given the current state of affairs SOA1?
should be the opposite, and should depend only on whether SOA2 is better than SOA1.
With that in mind, suppose you are asexual. Would you take a pill to make you not asexual? If you are like me, your sexuality is a nuisance (and is sometimes worse than a nuisance). Personally, I would not take this pill. I wouldn't see any compelling reason to induce in myself the desire to have sex. Therefore, being asexual is not worse for me than being not asexual, and is probably better. Therefore, I should become asexual, unless the costs of becoming asexual are high enough to justify remaining heterosexual (that might be true if, for instance, I was in a relationship).
Does this argument work in your case? Amusingly, there are pills that effectively eliminate libido. For men, these are "anti-androgens." The cost of taking these pills seems pretty small. Am I rationally required to take them?
There is an important asymmetry between the status quo and all alternatives. The status quo exists. You are walking around in it, seeing it close up, experiencing it. Any questions you may have about the reality around you can be answered by investigating it, and that investigation may turn up things you did not know, and did not know you did not know.
Alternatives, however, are imaginary. They're something made up in your head. As such, they do not have the tangibility — literally — of reality. They do not have the inexhaustibility of reality. You cannot discover things about them that you did not put into them. Outside of mathematics, applying reasoning to an imagined scenario is a poor guide to how it would work out if it were actually created. You don't know what you don't know about how it would work, and you have no way of discovering.
Or in brief, Status Quo Bias Fallacy.
That might only be true up until having the actual experience. Then you would be in a position to say which state of affairs you actually prefer.
ETA: See also.
Nobody is ever "rationally required" to do anything. [Imagine Soyboy vs. Chad meme here.]
You're still comparing a real situation with an imagined one. For such a large aspect of one's life, I do not think it possible to have such assurance that one can imagine the hypothetical situation well enough. Whatever you decide, you're taking a leap in the dark. This is not to say that you shouldn't take that leap, just to say that that is what you would be doing. You won't know what the other side is really (literally! really) like until you're there, and then there's no going back. (As I understand it, and my understanding may be out of date, the sor... (read more)