Note that this community reacts badly to some topics as well.
The failing of being mind-killed by certain triggers is pretty common, and I have to give this author credit for recognizing it. I'd prefer an attempt to analyze and work with the emotional impact, to find ways to continue to discuss things where rationality is possible, rather than a set of examples that trigger this person specifically.
I do wonder if we should have a way to add trigger-warnings and filters to posts and comments. It can't be made perfect, and there are some interesting and smart people who will still not be able to participate, but it could help for those who just can't be open and tolerant of some topics. And it could perhaps allow us to explore some of WHY some topics are mind-killing to some people, and find ways to work around it rather than just avoiding the topic.
Note that this community reacts badly to some topics as well.
In the sense of being unfavourable to some topics, or being irrationally unfavourable to those topics?
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.