The purpose of such writing is to be understood only by one's own side, to be a nod and a wink to say, "we know what I'm talking about, don't we?", and to leave no definite point for the enemy to attack. The difficulty that one has created for anyone outside the circle to engage with the matter can then be taken as further proof of their evilness.
If I look through this thread I find that there are plenty of people who had no trouble engaging the article and pointing out things of disagreement.
It's no easy text and you probably need some understanding of the underlying ideas, but it doesn't seem to me to be impossible to engage.
If I look through this thread I find that there are plenty of people who had no trouble engaging the article and pointing out things of disagreement.
How much of that is because people just imagined their own ideas in the not-very-specific article, and responded to that.
If I just told you: "Someone was criticizing LW" and stopped here, it's not like your mind couldn't complete the pattern with some easily available scenarios.
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.