Given the writing style, it seems to me that the author intended this piece to be read as a travelogue ("a trip to a far away land") rather than an article that tries to explain something to the readers. It is my impression that he does not try to think about the subject matter, he tries to feel it as a traveler who accidentally wandered here. Thus the author writes about his experiences, pays attention to small and idiosyncratic things (instead of trying to analyze anything), short sentences and quick leaps of thought is probably the authors way to give reader a dizzying feeling which, I guess, was what the author was feeling during his trip to an unfamiliar place due to meeting so many people in a short period of time. So, I guess, the author didn't care that much about whether his travelogue would give magazine's readers an accurate and insightful understanding of MIRI, CFAR and LessWrong. Instead, he probably cared about conveying his emotions and experiences to his readers.

It seems to me that the author didn't intend this piece to be thought of as a review of MIRI's activities. It seems to be as much (or maybe even more) about his trip as it is about the community he visited. Once you put this piece in a travelogue reference class, some of its flaws seem to be simply peculiarities of the writing style that is typical to that genre.