The article is obviously embarrassing to E.Y. If he didn't want to see this essay's Google rating improve, it wasn't about some general principle regarding "trolling." That's a pretty pathetic attempt at an excuse. It was something about this article. But what? Everyone thinks it's the "moral" aspect. That may be part of his worry: if so, it suggests that the SIAI/Less Wrong complex has a structure of levels--like say, Scientology--where the behavior of the more "conscious" is hidden from less-conscious followers.

But let me point out a specific revelation, not so prominent in the article but really more important for assessing SIAI and LW.

The messianic Mr. Yudkowsky also helped attract funding from his friend Peter Thiel, an early Facebook investor and noted libertarian billionaire whom Forbes pegs as the 303rd richest person in America. The Thiel Foundation, Mr. Thiel’s philanthropic group, has donated at least $1.1 million to SIAI, more than four times its next largest donor. (The nonprofit’s Form 990 from 2010 shows assets of $462,470.)

1. How do more leftwing members of the SIAI establishment feel about building an organization funded by (to realists, read "controlled by") an ultrarightwing billionaire? (It raises questions like is the "politics is mindkiller" trope in place to avoid alienating Mr. Thiel, who would be unimpressed by the anti-libertarianism of a considerable minority on LW.)

2. E.Y. has built a mystique about himself. Here's this self-schooled prodigy who has somehow managed to build a massive rationalist community and to preside over a half-million dollar nonprofit, living the good life of working only 4 hours per day (per LukeProg) and in that time, performing only tasks he likes to do, while being paid handsomely? It's a success story that's impressive. Even if you don't think E.Y. is a great philosopher, you have to admire him (at least the way Arnold Schwartzeneger once said he admired Hitler). It does the Yudkowsky myth no service to learn that he had the help of a billionaire, who almost singlehandedly funded his operations. If I've puzzled for years about the secret of E.Y. success, now I know it. He has a billionaire friend.

Caveat Unlike many others here, I don't like that there are billionaires. They've made a mockery of American politics, and their whimsical "charitable" support to intellectual factions will make a mockery of American intellectual life.