My first impression of lesswrong was of a community devoted to pop science, sci-fi, and futurism. Also, around that time singulartian was getting a bad name for good reasons (but it was the Kurzweil kind d'oh), and so I closed the tab thinking I wasn't missing anything interesting. It wasn't until years later when I was getting tired of the ignorance and arrogance of the skeptic community that I found my way back to lesswrong with some linked post that showed careful, honest thinking.

It would be a good idea to put up a highly visible link on the front page addressing new visitors' immediate criticisms. For example:

• Is this place a Kurzweil fanclub?
• Are you guys pulling most of the content on this site out of your ass?
• Why should I care what you people have to say? The people here seem weird.
• I think most of what you people believe is bullshit, am I not welcome here?

Another thing, the layout of this site will take people more than ten seconds to grok which is enough to have most people just leave. For instance, I'd rename 'discussion' to 'forum' and 'main' to 'rationality blog' or just 'blog'.