If you look at the HTML (or turn off CSS) you'll see that the words are actually still there, only hidden. It's making the site harder to use and not even helping the search engine issues.
Ouch. A decision may need to be made one way or another, then. It would indeed be a pity to have the worst of both worlds.
I must say that I kinda like those icons though.
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 it seems like the category menus have been replaced by dropdown menus.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?