“Sorry if it offends you, I just don’t think in general that you should apply this stuff to society. Like… no.”
I don’t understand what “this stuff” refers to in this sentence and it is far from clear to me that your interpretation of what your friend said is correct.
I also don’t think it’s a good idea to take an axiomatic approach to something like social justice. This approach:
primes you in the wrong direction about complexity of value (when you hear “axioms” you think maybe 5 or 6, not 5,000 or 6,000)
Edit: Also, a general comment. Suppose you think that the optimal algorithm for solving a problem is X. It does not follow that making your algorithm look more like X will make it a better algorithm. X may have many essential parts, and making your algorithm look more like X by imitating some but not all of its essential parts may make it much worse than it was initially. In fact, a reasonably efficient algorithm which is reasonably good at solving the problem may look nothing like X.
This is to say that at the end of the day, the main way you should be criticizing your friend’s approach to social justice is based on its results, not based on aesthetic opinions you have about its structure.
This comment causes me unpleasant cognitive dissonance. I read the second party’s statement as meaning something like “no, logical rigor is out of place in this subject, and that’s how it should be.” And I find that attitude, if not offensive, at least incredibly irritating and wrongheaded.
And yet I recognize that your argument has merit and I may need to update. I state this not so much because I have something useful to say for or against it, but to force it out of my head so I can’t pretend the conflict isn’t there.
I don’t understand what “this stuff” refers to in this sentence and it is far from clear to me that your interpretation of what your friend said is correct.
I also don’t think it’s a good idea to take an axiomatic approach to something like social justice. This approach:
primes you in the wrong direction about complexity of value (when you hear “axioms” you think maybe 5 or 6, not 5,000 or 6,000)
risks falling prey to confusion about the meaning of words
risks confusing terminal and instrumental values
risks assigning empirical statements probability 1.
Edit: Also, a general comment. Suppose you think that the optimal algorithm for solving a problem is X. It does not follow that making your algorithm look more like X will make it a better algorithm. X may have many essential parts, and making your algorithm look more like X by imitating some but not all of its essential parts may make it much worse than it was initially. In fact, a reasonably efficient algorithm which is reasonably good at solving the problem may look nothing like X.
This is to say that at the end of the day, the main way you should be criticizing your friend’s approach to social justice is based on its results, not based on aesthetic opinions you have about its structure.
This comment causes me unpleasant cognitive dissonance. I read the second party’s statement as meaning something like “no, logical rigor is out of place in this subject, and that’s how it should be.” And I find that attitude, if not offensive, at least incredibly irritating and wrongheaded.
And yet I recognize that your argument has merit and I may need to update. I state this not so much because I have something useful to say for or against it, but to force it out of my head so I can’t pretend the conflict isn’t there.
See this comment for a steelmanning of what I think the friend’s point of view is.