Several weeks ago I wrote a heavily upvoted post called Don't Be Afraid of Asking Personally Important Questions on LessWrong. I thought it would only be due diligence if I tried to track users on LessWrong who have received advice on this site and it's backfired. In other words, to avoid bias in the record, we might notice what LessWrong as a community is bad at giving advice about. So, I'm seeking feedback. If you have anecdotes or data of how a plan or advice directly from LessWrong backfired, failed, or didn't lead to satisfaction, please share below.
I can't think of anything on which LW did backfire, but some points on which LW is rather about neutral. I think it is valuable to list this neutral data points too.
I find myself arguing over the quality and content of LessWrong posts with friends, one close friend in particular. He questions the aspirations and qualifications of LW in general and some posts/authors we were discussing in particular. And I find myself at least partly agreeing with his assessments. Not because of his rhetoric or my wish for consent. Rather because it is convicing.
For context: He is my sparrings partner for validating new ideas I have developed or picked up (not only on LW). I admit that I use his clear and sceptical reasoning and solid theoretical footing as a sanity check for my own reasoning (thus guarding against egocentric and overconfidence bias; actually a good idea: everybody should have such a santity check partner). Now I have to ask myself: Do his arguments generalize? It taints the LW experience. It eats time not only on LW but also of our personal discussions which now tend to go meta more often now. He hasn't read much of the LW topics and thus has an outside view somewhat filtered by my presentation of the topics under consideration. And the inferential gap this causes between what I know about topics on LW and what he knows about such topics cause 'needed explanation' tension. My discussions with him would probably run more smooth without LW.
I also agree with some commenters that reading and commenting on LW can eat quite a lot of time not all of is worth it.
Any LW-concept-specific critiques applicable to everyone else?