Yeesh. These people shouldn't let feelings or appearances influence their opinions of EY's trustworthiness -- or "morally repulsive" ideas like justifications for genocide. That's why I feel it's perfectly rational to dismiss their criticisms -- that and the fact that there's no evidence backing up their claims. How can there be? After all, as I explain here, Bayesian epistemology is central to LW-style rationality and related ideas like Friendly AI and effective altruism. Frankly, with the kind of muddle-headed thinking those haters display, they don't really deserve the insights that LW provides.

There, that's 8 out of 10 bullet points. I couldn't get the "manipulation" one in because "something sinister" is underspecified; as to the "censorship" one, well, I didn't want to mention the... thing... (ooh, meta! Gonna give myself partial credit for that one.)

Ab, V qba'g npghnyyl ubyq gur ivrjf V rkcerffrq nobir; vg'f whfg n wbxr.

That makes me more curious; I have the feeling there's quite a bit of anti-geek/nerd sentiment among geeks/nerds, not just non-nerds.

(Not sure how to write the above sentence in a way that doesn't sound like an implicit demand for more information! I recognize you might be unable or unwilling to elaborate on this.)