In some investigations, it's like trying to determine if there is life on a planet by bombing it.
How does that simile make sense? You can destroy the life by bombing it, I don't see what you supposedly destroy by posting on a blog.
I chose this simile because I did want to capture how destructive and upsetting I find these discussions. (Though I then preferred the humor of the word, 'trainwreckiness'). Another analogy I had in mind was that of astronauts drinking tea (the astronauts capture the overly cerebral cluelessness better, and for sure imagine a 'high tea' with little cups and little knives for spreading jam that keep getting fumbled) but I wanted to also have it immediately understood that the porcelain cups were imploding like eggshells in their oversized white mittens. The bull was a better symbol for this.
A long blog post explains why the author, a feminist, is not comfortable with the rationalist community despite thinking it is "super cool and interesting". It's directed specifically at Yvain, but it's probably general enough to be of some interest here.
http://apophemi.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/why-im-not-on-the-rationalist-masterlist/
I'm not sure if I can summarize this fairly but the main thrust seems to be that we are overly willing to entertain offensive/taboo/hurtful ideas and this drives off many types of people. Here's a quote:
The author perceives a link between LW type open discourse and danger to minority groups. I'm not sure whether that's true or not. Take race. Many LWers are willing to entertain ideas about the existence and possible importance of average group differences in psychological traits. So, maybe LWers are racists. But they're racists who continually obsess over optimizing their philanthropic contributions to African charities. So, maybe not racists in a dangerous way?
An overly rosy view, perhaps, and I don't want to deny the reality of the blogger's experience. Clearly, the person is intelligent and attracted to some aspects of LW discourse while turned off by other aspects.