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:
In other words, prizing discourse without limitations (I tried to find a convenient analogy for said limitations and failed. Fenders? Safety belts?) will result in an environment in which people are more comfortable speaking the more social privilege they hold.
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.
The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a strong movement for Maintaining Decent Treatment for All People.
I'm concerned that it's really hard to get people to do political things unless there's some excessive opposition to a defined group.
Well, usually that doesn't fall under the rubric of a political movement at all. We just call it civility - a core moral value of any physical community where people seek to be protected from bodily harm and thrive in a nurturing environment.
If there is any political question here, it's who or what should be included under "people". Folks who are similar enough to you in e.g. culture that you can intuitively trust them? Any Homosap... (read more)