Either the forbidden post is false, in which case it does not deserve protection because it's false, or it's true, in which case it should be censored because no informed person should want to see it.
Excluded middle, of course: incorrect criterion. (Was this intended as a test?) It would not deserve protection if it were useless (like spam), not "if it were false."
The reason I consider sufficient to keep it off LessWrong is that it actually hurt actual people. That's pretty convincing to me. I wouldn't expunge it from the Internet (though I might put a warning label on it), but from LW? Appropriate. Reposting it here? Rude.
Unfortunately, that's also an argument as to why it needs serious thought applied to it, because if the results of decompartmentalised thinking can lead there, humans need to be able to handle them. As Vaniver pointed out, there are previous historical texts that have had similar effects. Rationalists need to be able to cope with such things, as they have learnt to cope with previous conceptual basilisks. So it's legitimate LessWrong material at the same time as being inappropriate for here. Tricky one.
(To the ends of that "compartmentalisation" link, by the way, I'm interested in past examples of basilisks and other motifs of harmful sensation in idea form. Yes, I have the deleted Wikipedia article.)
Note that I personally found the idea itself silly at best.
Ideally, I'd like to save the world. One way to do that involves contributing academic research, which raises the question of what's the most effective way of doing that.
The traditional wisdom says if you want to do research, you should get a job in a university. But for the most part the system seems to be set up so that you first spend a long time working for someone else and research their ideas, after which you can lead your own group, but then most of your time will be spent on applying for grants and other administrative trivia rather than actually researching the interesting stuff. Also, in Finland at least, all professors need to also spend time doing teaching, so that's another time sink.
I suspect I would have more time to actually dedicate on research, and I could get doing it quicker, if I took a part-time job and did the research in my spare time. E.g. the recommended rates for a freelance journalist in Finland would allow me to spend a week each month doing work and three weeks doing research, of course assuming that I can pull off the freelance journalism part.
What (dis)advantages does this have compared to the traditional model?
Some advantages:
Some disadvantages:
EDIT: Note that while I certainly do appreciate comments specific to my situation, I posted this over at LW and not Discussion because I was hoping the discussion would also be useful for others who might be considering an academic path. So feel free to also provide commentary that's US-specific, say.