I wrote one of the comments you quote, and I also downvoted your article. Originally I felt I shouldn't upvote it, because it is a PR suicide, but I also shouldn't downvote it, because it is essentially correct. At that moment the article karma was zero, so maybe other people had similar thoughts. So instead of voting I wrote the comment. But then I saw that you also added the tags to the article, and that was the last straw. It felt like one article was just a one-time incident that could be left ignored, but creating tags felt like saying: this is one of the official topics of this website. Also the fact that you announced your intention to write more articles like this. At that moment it wasn't a vote about one specific article, but about whether I want this topic to be regularly discussed on LW. Which I don't.

I completely agree with fubarobfusco that this is what a real social taboo looks like. Quoting Paul Graham's "What You Can't Say":

When you find something you can't say, what do you do with it? My advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles.

Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

(...) I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. (...) The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. [By this I mean you'd have to become a professional controversialist, not that Noam Chomsky's opinions = what you can't say.]

And this is it. Here is the difference, that for you it is very important to "rehabilitate the color yellow", but for most of the LW community, even if they would agree with your ideas, "being labelled as a yellowist would just be a distraction". The cost seems to be too high, in this case.

Please note that some of us use our real names here. Any bad reputation LW gets, has a risk to be connected with our identities; and for example I really don't volunteer to be connected with this specific cause. Let's say that for people like me, being non-anonymous on LW was perhaps a stupid decision; I could have easily done otherwise. But there are other people, who didn't have the choice: people who are employed or otherwise cooperate with MIRI and CFAR. [EDIT: Removed specific examples.] Their publicity is a tool to get their tasks done more efficiently. Again, I don't know what opinions these people may have on your topic, but as far as I know they didn't volunteer to be publicly associated with it. I want to protect them just as I want to protect myself.

You do have a point. But there are social consequences, and we do have to make a trade-off. I promise to downvote any future article about this topic. [EDIT: Removed some words of encouragement, because I updated towards the author merely trolling.]

If LW has any value for you even without discussing this specific topic, I'd recommend creating a new username and starting again, never linking to the old one. If no, then please leave.

Perhaps the net judgment of the LessWrong community is that it should be a forbidden topic. But if so, I think it's worth making a conscious note of that fact.

I would advise against making too specific list of the forbidden topics. But making a vague notion would just invite more questions. Not sure what kind of a "conscious note" we can have here. I guess we should just remember having this conversation, and move on.