Trolley problems..... I keep getting an impression that the point is that people don't have enough inhibitions against killing for the greater good.
I don't really like trolley problems either, but I don't think they can be waved away. When programming a self-driving car's decision algorithm for reacting when a car full of people skids in front of it while there is a single pedestrian on the sidewalk where it would have to swerve, you are essentially dealing with a real -world trolley problem.
Better to hit the other car rather than the pedestrian. The people in the car are protected by a lot of metal and will tend to suffer much less damage.
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.