But his response, typical of a certain class of rationalist is so offensive to social justice types
This is a problem with the social justice types being too mindkilled, not a problem with Mestroyer's logic.
Disagree. Social justice is a set of dozens of axes and deals with issues like the prison-industrial complex. But somehow people caught up in that are being unreasonable when Mestroyer says that existential risk is more important and they take offense? That's ridiculous.
The net harm done by any number of social justice issues far outweighs the issues Mestroyer considers important based on his comment.
Are you arguing that its merely the intensity of the response that makes them mindkilled?
Scott, known on LessWrong as Yvain, recently wrote a post complaining about an inaccurate rape statistic.
Arthur Chu, who is notable for winning money on Jeopardy recently, argued against Scott's stance that we should be honest in arguments in a comment thread on Jeff Kaufman's Facebook profile, which can be read here.
Scott just responded here, with a number of points relevant to the topic of rationalist communities.
I am interested in what LW thinks of this.
Obviously, at some point being polite in our arguments is silly. I'd be interested in people's opinions of how dire the real world consequences have to be before it's worthwhile debating dishonestly.