Yes, but we are going to need to deal with eventually. If we're only rational by staying away from the issues that we are actually very emotional about then we aren't doing anything very impressive. "Refining the art of human rationality except in the areas that normally inflames emotions" doesn't sound like a great motto.
I don't think we, as a community, are strong enough at rationality to deal with it. I'd like to be wrong, but I'm not in much of hurry to find out.
And even if we are good enough, and have a big rational discussion on a hot-button and usually divisive topic, and come out mostly agreeing that the Herp position is right an the Derp position is wrong - that will just make the site more attractive to less-rational Herpists, and give Derpists a pretext to dismiss LessWrong because "they're obviously motivated by Herpism".
Are there any areas of study that you feel are underrepresented here, and would be interesting and useful to lesswrongers?
I feel some topics are getting old (Omega, drama about moderation policy, a newcomer telling us our lack of admiration for his ideas is proof of groupthink, Friendly AI, Cryonics, Epistemic vs. Instrumental Rationality, lamenting how we're a bunch of self-centered nerds, etc. ...), and with a bit of luck, we might have some lurkers that are knowledgeable about interesting areas, and didn't think they could contribute.
Please stick to one topic per comment, so that highly-upvoted topics stand out more clearly.