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.
The new icons have potential to be offensive, however; a thumbs-up gesture is an obscene suggestion in some cultures. If we have to use icons for up/down votes, it might make more sense to use reddit arrows.
I'm personally not in the "no icons" camp, so much as the, "these are the wrong icons" camp. Even though I know what they mean, I keep thinking the bent arrow is the reply button and that the envelope means private message. And the peanut-looking thing isn't very suggestive of its function, either.
Of course, I don't know that there are any icons that would satisfy me; I'm just saying I'm not in principle opposed to them.
However, if the main purpose of the change is SEO, then there's no reason we couldn't have icons with text in them... ;-)
(As someone else pointed out, though, the text is still there, just hidden. A little tweaking in Firebug, and I've actually gotten the action links to look roughly like they did before, and I'm tempted to try to figure out how to make those changes permanent on my end.)
One other thing that bugs me about the current icons is that they are not at all inviting. Every time a new user sees "vote" and "reply", they are being subliminally primed to participate in the site. (Heck - they have that effect on existing users as well.) The icons, however, don't prime a damn thing AFAICT. I see the thumbs and think, "meh" - they look like somebody changing their mind, unsure whether to vote up or down. I see the envelope, and wonder if I have any mail.
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 it seems like the category menus have been replaced by dropdown menus.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?