So I disagree with most of this criticism, but this seems like a really weak argument. This essentially says that cultural taboos should override discussion on issues of instrumental rationality. Yet at the same time, many supporters and people involved with the the SIAI (including Eliezer) argue that their success is one of the most important things on the planet right now. If one takes that claim seriously, then breaking a culturally contingent taboo seems like a small price to pay for that success.
all reflect more poorly on the rest of us than a somewhat out of the ordinary dating profile
Reflects more poorly in what way and has what predicted result? Do you think it will make people less likely to read LW? Do you think it will make people likely to leave LW?
It's not really a discussion of rationality, it's a discussion of the impact of a dating profile. I don't believe that this issue will really influence us one way or another, and scrutinizing over the personal life of one of the community's founding members out of paranoia for our public image can only help to reinforce the "cultish" signals we seem to give off.
I think we've already broken so many taboos that it doesn't really matter if we break a few more, but this post defies cultural norms to rectify the breaking of cultural norms (not that a...
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.")