I'm pretty uncomfortable with... well, just about everything in this post.
First, even assuming that lots of commenters at Marginal Revolution "reacted negatively" to the profile, I find it hard to believe that it could really have much effect on the general LW project of "raising the sanity waterline." Fine, Eliezer talks about some personal things that most people wouldn't mention publicly and, surprise surprise, some people have a sharp reaction to that. But how many out there are really going to think "oh my, this 'rationality' business sounded okay, but now that I've seen this dating profile, not so much." Yes, I realize that's an exaggeration, and yes, I understand there can be small, even unconscious effects at the margins. But come on, anyone seriously put off by something this harmless probably wasn't a very promising rationalist anyway.
Second, who's to say whether the net effect is negative? This is just speculation on my part, but I imagine a lot of people who read something like this (even some of those who purport to act "shocked" or whatever) would actually think "wow, that sounds pretty cool -- wish my life were more like that." Just looking at the anecdotal evidence from the four comments quoted above, the first suggests he doesn't get laid, the second suggests he does, and the fourth notes that reading the profile helped uncover a source of pleasure the person hadn't notice before. Only the third comment -- invoking the "cult leader" concept -- redounds to the detriment of the community itself. And lots of people are going to think that anyway, so I don't see much in the way of an additional problem here. If anything, maybe this makes us look cool and into kinky stuff?
Third, come on, is this really something that needs to get hashed out on a LW post? To whatever extent Eliezer wants privacy, can't we just let him date in peace? A sexual fetish isn't the kind of thing that truth can destroy (let's be honest, that section is 90% of the "controversy" here), and presumably, most of us are fighting for a world that's more open, more tolerant, and just straight-up more fun when it comes to sex and relationships. It would be pretty sad if, in pursuit of that goal, our community required its more prolific members to pretend to the contrary. If my expectations are wrong and this OKCupid profile really becomes a major problem, well, I guess Eliezer will have to decide how to deal with it. But I seriously doubt we're at that point, and I kind of hope we can just drop it.
The rationalist in question, of course, is our very own EY.
Quotes giving a reasonable sample of the spectrum of reactions:
Why is this important to consider?
LessWrong as a community is dedicated to trying to "raise the sanity waterline," and its most respected members in particular put a lot of resources into outreach, via CFAR, HPMoR, and maintaining this site. But a big factor in how people perceive our brand of rationality is about image. If we're serious about raising the sanity waterline, that means image management - or at least avoiding active image malpractice - is something we should enthusiastically embrace as a way to achieve our goals. [1]
This is also a valuable exercise in considering the outside view. Marginal Revolution is already a fairly WEIRD site, focused on abstract economic issues. If any major blog is likely to be sympathetic to our cultural quirks, this would be it. Yet a plurality of commenters reacted negatively.
To the extent that we didn't notice anything strange about LW's figurehead having this OKCupid profile, LW either failed at calibrating mainstream reaction, or failed at consequentialism and realizing the drag this would have on our other recruitment efforts. In our last discussion, there were only a few commenters raising concerns, and the consensus of the thread was that it was harmless and had no PR consequences worth noting.
As one commenter cogently put it,
I'd argue the same reasoning applies to the community at large, not just EY specifically.
[1] From Anna's excellent article: 5. I consciously attempt to welcome bad news, or at least not push it away. (Recent example from Eliezer: At a brainstorming session for future Singularity Summits, one issue raised was that we hadn't really been asking for money at previous ones. My brain was offering resistance, so I applied the "bad news is good news" pattern to rephrase this as, "This point doesn't change the fixed amount of money we raised in past years, so it is good news because it implies that we can fix the strategy and do better next year.")