Honestly I'm much more concerned about LessWrong staying as sane as it is. Overall I think there are several negative indications.

I agree. I always thought the "raising the sanity waterline" was a substitute for "refining the art of human rationality", not a compliment. Imagine if the Logical Empiricists tried recruiting everyday people rather than the scientific elite (and other scientifically literate philosophers)? I fear that HPMOR, while I've gotten a lot of value from it, was the beginning of the end for this place. At the very least, I think these efforts should be spun off as much as possible (and without links leading back here). I say, let self-selection effects do their thing.