EY is one of the smartest people on the planet...

Can you even judge that without being as smart yourself? And how many people on the planet do you know? I know you likely just said this for other purposes, but I want to highlight the risk of believing him to be THAT smart and consenquently believe what he is saying based on your believe that he is smart.

...you do not have the educational achievements necessary to evaluate his work...

That is right, or might be, as the evidence that I could evaluate seems to be missing.

...4 years is plenty of time for Eliezer and his friends to have arrived at beliefs at very great inferential distance from any of your beliefs.

True, but in the case of evolution you are more likely to be able to follow the chain of subsequent conclusions. In the case of evolution evidence isn't far, it's not beneath 14 years of ideas based on some hypothesis. In the case of the SIAI it rather seems to be that there are hypotheses based on other hypotheses that are not yet tested.

About half of the regular readers of Less Wrong saw the banned post, and the vast majority (including me) of those who saw it agree with or are willing to accept Eliezer's decision to delete it.

And my guess is that not one of them could explain their reasoning to support the censorship of ideas to an extent that would accommodate for such a decision. They will just base their reasoning on arguments of unknown foundation previously made by EY.