I don't know any LW-ers in person, but I'm sure that at least some people have benefited from reading the sequences.
You miss my meaning. The stated core goal of MIRI/the old SIAI is to develop friendly AI. With regards to that goal, the sequences are advertising.
With regards to their core goal, the sequences matter if 1. they lead to people donating to MIRI 2. they lead to people working on friendly AI.
I view point 1 as advertising, and I think research papers are obviously better than the sequences for point 2.
A big part of the purpose of the Sequences is to kill likely mistakes and missteps from smart people trying to think about AI. 'Friendly AI' is a sufficiently difficult problem that it may be more urgent to raise the sanity waterline, filter for technical and philosophical insight, and amplify that insight (e.g., through CFAR), than to merely inform academia that AI is risky. Given people's tendencies to leap on the first solution that pops into their head, indulge in anthropomorphism and optimism, and become inoculated to arguments that don't fully persuade them on the first go, there's a case to be made for improving people's epistemic rationality, and honing the MIRI arguments more carefully, before diving into outreach.
Many people have an incorrect view of the Future of Humanity Institute's funding situation, so this is a brief note to correct that; think of it as a spiritual successor to this post. As John Maxwell puts it, FHI is "one of the three organizations co-sponsoring LW [and] a group within the University of Oxford's philosophy department that tackles important, large-scale problems for humanity like how to go about reducing existential risk." (If you're not familiar with our work, this article is a nice, readable introduction, and our director, Nick Bostrom, wrote Superintelligence.) Though we are a research institute in an ancient and venerable institution, this does not guarantee funding or long-term stability.