I thought so too at first, and was annoyed, but it seems that icons are more inclusive, as they don't unnecessarily favor native English speakers.
This might be a more important consideration for a website that wasn't, you know, based around arguing subtle points in fairly precise English.
True, but from the fact that someone is somewhat fluent in English, it doesn't follow that they can easily infer the meanings of such context-free and technical terms. In fairness, though, I don't know the extent of this problem, and I can't really speak for such an audience. I do know that has been, well, general, unspoken policy to be at least as inclusive in other contexts, even when the nature of this site would kind of obviate the need to be inclusive in that particular way.
I saw some discussion posts earlier talking about a LessWrong redesign, and now that things look different, I guess that it's been implemented. I'm always slightly annoyed for a while when a site I use gets redesigned because I have to relearn where everything is, but it eventually wears off once I'm used to the changes.
My initial impressions:
"Hmmm... it seems like the category menus have been replaced by dropdown menus. It's not like I used many of them anyway."
"Okay, I've clicked my name to see my recently posted comments. Now, where's the link to see it in context? Oh, I guess I have to click that icon in the lower right corner. For some reason I was looking for something at the upper right of the comment box."
"Well, that worked. Now how do I click to the parent comment? Oh, wait, it's probably one of those new icons in the lower right corner. I'll just mouseover them to see what they do..."
::realization sets in::
"AAUGH! LESSWRONG IS USING MYSTERY MEAT NAVIGATION!!!"
So, what does everyone else think of the new redesign?