"I have become fully convinced that even bringing it up is actively harmful."

What evidence leads you to this conclusion?

Eliezer: Please, learn what turns good ideas into cults, and avoid it! Barely-aware public: Huh, wah? Cults? Cults! Less Wrong is a cult!

Can you provide evidence to support this characterization?

Eliezer: Do not worship a hero! Do not trust! Rationalwiki et al: LW is a personality cult around Eliezer because of so-and-so.

Can you provide evidence to support this characterization?

I would like to see some empirical analysis of the points made here and by the original poster. We should gather some data about perceptions from real users and use that to inform future discussion on this topic. I think we have a starting point in the responses to this post, and comments in other posts could probably be mined for information, but we should also try to find some rational people who are not familiar with less wrong and introduce them to it and ask them for their impressions (from someone acting like they just found the site, are not affiliated with it, and are curious about their friend's impressions, or something like that).