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OrphanWilde comments on Marketing Rationality - Less Wrong
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Not sure if it makes any difference, but instead of "stupid people" I think about people reading articles about 'life hacking' as "people who will probably have little benefit from the advice, because they will most likely immediately read hundred more articles and never apply the advice"; and also that the format of the advice completely ignores the inferential distances, so pretty much the only useful thing such article could give you is a link to a place that provides the real value. And if you are really really lucky, you will notice the link, follow the link, stay there, and get some of the value.
If I'd believe the readers were literally stupid, then of course I wouldn't see much value in advertising LW to them. LW is not useful for stupid people, but can be useful to people... uhm... like I used to be before I found LW.
Which means, I used to spend a lot of time browsing random internet pages, a few times I found a link to some LW article that I read and moved on, and only after some time I realized: "Oh, I have already found a few interesting articles on the same website. Maybe instead of randomly browsing the web, reading this one website systematically could be better!" And that was my introduction to the rationalist community; these days I regularly attend LW meetups.
Could Gleb's articles provide the same gateway for someone else (albeit only for a tiny fraction of the readership)? I don't see a reason why not.
Yes, the clickbait site will make money. Okay. If instead someone would make paper flyers for LW, then the printing company would make money.
Is it worth introducing one reader by poisoning nine, however? First impressions do matter, and if the first impression rationalism gives people is that of a cult making pseudoscientific pop-self-help-ish promises about improving their lives, you're trading short-term gains for long-term difficulties overcoming that reputation (which, I'll note, the rationalist community already struggles with).
Please avoid using terms like "poisoning" and other vague claims. It's an argument-style Dark Arts, which is your skills set as you previously clearly acknowledged, and attack Intentional Insights through pattern-matching and making vague claims. Instead, please consider using rational communication. For example, be specific and concrete about how our articles, for example this one, posion nine readers out of ten, and introduce one reader to rationality. Thanks!