There's a spirit in LW which really is a spirit that exists in many other places,

Yes, and pointing out those other places here serves two purposes.

It serves to brand LW, so that people passing by can quickly see the kind of spirit here. Yes, there's a whole world out there, and many of us have spent some time in it, so seeing references to that world here serves to quickly communicate some of what LW is about.

References also server to point people here to other expositions of similar material.

For example, you say:

The only real way for people to learn better is to go out and read Language in Thought and Action

I'd recommend people at some point move on from Hayakawa to Korzybski, Science and Sanity, and the whole General Semantics literature. People have spent decades discussing these issues and organizing

It doesn't get people to read the literature. Why should they? From what they can see, it's already been presented to them on LW, after all.

That's not my reaction to references. When I first came here, the references to Jaynes didn't make me think "I've already covered this stuff, no need to read this web site." On the contrary, it made me want to read more. Similarly, seeing a reference to other work associated with a sequence wouldn't make me think "no need to bother reading that, EY has already regurgitated it for me", it would make me want to read the original.

Yes, there's a whole world out there, making it easier to navigate that world with links is a good thing.