What parts of neo-reactionary philosophy does Yvain actually agree with? He says at the end of the anti-reactionary FAQ that he likes how they're utopian, but then says he's actually more interested in other utopian schemes.
This comment by Yvain clears up a lot:
...Someone on IRC said it better than I could – I am much more likely to agree with object-level Reactionary policies – which was what Nutshell talked about – than with meta-level Reactionary theories – which are mostly what this is addressing.
I agree with Nutshell on most of the object-level policies that didn’t get directly rebutted here, except insofar as they’re things that are hard and probably counterproductive to change. But many of the parts that say “If you’re in a hole stop digging” seem mostly correct to me.
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.