Post something half-baked on LW and you will be torn to shreds. Which is great, of course, and I wouldn't have it any other way

I would have it, and I don't find it great. Why should baking be an individual effort? Teamwork is better. It should be seen as "here, if you like it, help me bake it". That is why it is Discussion, not Main. I think a good way to use this site setup would be to throw half-baked things into Discussion, if it sounds interesting cooperate on baking it, then when done promote to Main. Really, why don't we do this?

All the great articles in the past, LW 2007-2010 look a lot like individual effort. Why should it be so?

Is this a bit Silicon Valley Culture? Because those guys do the same - they have a software idea and work on it individually or with 1-2 co-founders. Why? Why not start an open source project and invite contributors from Step 1? Why not throw half-made ideas out in the wild and encourage others to work on them to finish them? Assuming you are not after the money but after a solution you yourself would use, of course - "scratch your own itch" is a good idea in open source.

This kind of individual-effort culture sounds a lot like a culture where insights are in abundance but working on them is scarce, so people don't value much insights from others as long as they are not properly worked out. Well, I should say I am pretty much used to the opposite, most folks I know just work routine and hardly any reflection at all...