The people here seem weird.
HAMLET. Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
The people here are weird, even by the standards of other rationalist communities, which of course are a bunch of big weirdos themselves by the standards of the general population.
If you're here, you're a big weirdo by conventional standards. Get over it.
But know that there's something a lot worse than being a weirdo - forgetting who you are, and trying to be something you're not. I think I did that. It's hard to be a weirdo alone. Always cutting against the grain. Never quite feeling understood. The worst is feeling that the best of you is not appreciated.
Harry Browne had a classic pop egoist book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. One very good bit of advice. Be who you are, and advertise who you are. Let your natural market come to you, instead of trying package yourself for a market that really doesn't value you.
Lots of talk about akrasia here. In my case, I'm sure a big part of it was trying to package myself for the approval of others, instead of being and doing what I wanted. How could I possibly have motivation for a life I didn't actually want?
We are not a Phyg! We are not a Phyg!
Stop worrying about how people with different values see this place, and start worrying about how to connect to people with the same values. Sell to your natural market.
Be who you are, Loudly and Unapologetically.
Be who you are
Keep your (status quo) identity small, don't be who you are, strive to be who you should be.
I've spent so much time in the cogsci literature that I know the LW approach to rationality is basically the mainstream cogsci approach to rationality (plus some extra stuff about, e.g., language), but... do other people not know this? Do people one step removed from LessWrong — say, in the 'atheist' and 'skeptic' communities — not know this? If this is causing credibility problems in our broader community, it'd be relatively easy to show people that Less Wrong is not, in fact, a "fringe" approach to rationality.
For example, here's Oaksford & Chater in the second chapter to the (excellent) new Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, the one on normative systems of rationality:
Is it meaningful to attempt to develop a general theory of rationality at all? We might tentatively suggest that it is a prima facie sign of irrationality to believe in alien abduction, or to will a sports team to win in order to increase their chance of victory. But these views or actions might be entirely rational, given suitably nonstandard background beliefs about other alien activity and the general efficacy of psychic powers. Irrationality may, though, be ascribed if there is a clash between a particular belief or behavior and such background assumptions. Thus, a thorough-going physicalist may, perhaps, be accused of irrationality if she simultaneously believes in psychic powers. A theory of rationality cannot, therefore, be viewed as clarifying either what people should believe or how people should act—but it can determine whether beliefs and behaviors are compatible. Similarly, a theory of rational choice cannot determine whether it is rational to smoke or to exercise daily; but it might clarify whether a particular choice is compatible with other beliefs and choices.
From this viewpoint, normative theories can be viewed as clarifying conditions of consistency… Logic can be viewed as studying the notion of consistency over beliefs. Probability… studies consistency over degrees of belief. Rational choice theory studies the consistency of beliefs and values with choices.
They go on to clarify that by probability they mean Bayesian probability theory, and by rational choice theory they mean Bayesian decision theory. You'll get the same account in the textbooks on the cogsci of rationality, e.g. Thinking and Deciding or Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.