That is precisely my problem with them: in my humble opinion, the discussions about self-improvement have not met the intellectual standards of the other discussions here. And since they have represented a significant fraction of all comments here, they have decreased the intellectual standards of the average comment enough to make me worry that the kind of participants I most want to interact with are leaving Less Wrong at a rate higher than the other participants are.

EDIT. It would ease my worries if they were easier to avoid: for example, it would ease my worries if there were fewer of them in the comment sections of posts with no obvious connection to self-improvement.