I am interested in perceptions of the damage expected to be caused to LW from discussion of this topic and wonder if people can be more precise in their thinking about this. Here are some other scenarios: If some established members discussed pedophilia and their opinions were within the commonly accepted range of views on the topic, would that reflect poorly on LW? For instance, suppose there was a debate where one pole of opinion was the status quo, and others were that child sex abusers should never be released from prison, or that execution would be an inappropriate punishment. If some established community members who swore they were not pedophiles held a discussion where they expressed views similar to what I have been presenting, would that be damaging to the community? I gather people have now and then questioned whether adult-child sexual activity always causes harm. In the above cases, would tagging posts "pedophilia" or "childsexabuse" cause damage? Suppose a member made posts on ordinary LW topics that were of high quality, but noted now and then that they were a celibate pedophile and would like to remind people that such people are among us all the time, would that cause damage? Typically in a community the people who care about a subject discuss it and those who don't do not. If a poll revealed that 90% of the community did not want the topic discussed but a small group kept discussing it, would that insulate the community from damage to any extent?

I recall making very similar arguments on pedophilia and generally being up voted. I think this is best explained by there being a stricter standard of avoiding taboo topics for main compared to the comment section. I recall other controversial subjects such as the effectiveness of terrorism to stop Moore's law (was upvoted) and racial differences in intelligence (was downvoted) in main articles. And an article where lukeprog basically took any claim of the PUAs he found plausible and could find academic backing for and presented it divorced from the subculture, that was supposed to be the beginning of a series, but was probably seen as not desirable for the site and discontinued (despite it being upvoted). I have made arguments about as controversial as the ones in your linked article in comments on pedophilia and they have generally been well received. The same is true of my arguments in favor of there being a hereditary component to the measured racial differences in intelligence. Alas I haven't commented on terrorism. I think there is a general norm for things you can't talk about: [...] The lesson I think really is to bring these kinds of topics up when they are one relevant example among several. If one wants them discussed as a standalone topics, open threads seem best or discussion section topics at most (hey we need something there besides meetup threads anyway).