I cannot tell why people speak with such vehemence and dislike of LW. You do not even have to agree that AI risk is the biggest threat to mankind. I'm sure many don't. You don't really have to agree about much.

Still you can go there to talk about textbook advice, get some real advice, and actually generate fairly good discussion. The sheer seething hate points to me of a fairly malformed opinion about the community and culture.

tl;dr some guy gets banned due to some careless mistake, a few people blow it way out of proportion over and over and now apparently you can get published on slate over b& drama.

The LessWrongosphere is more cultish and wacky the further out from the center you go, while being more and more like CS/math academia the further in you go. It doesn't help that they got their start on Overcoming Bias, which already attempts to write off everything in human life that doesn't optimize for economic productivity as "irrational", and then added the participants of the HPMoR fandom who understand just enough to stand in awe of EY but not enough to participate usefully in real discussions about math, logic, and statistics.

Mere slander. What evidence is there that this happens? Overcoming bias is a blog dedicated to overcoming biases that many humans have, economic productivity abstracts away too much from what it means. Economic productivity translates into higher living standards, far superior healthcare, and income per person.

Most on LW are fiercely individualistic. I do not share most of my views with the LW end, but it is still a noticeable improvement over the ghetto that is thinking everywhere else. Also I hate fanfiction and think most is generally lame, but let people have it I guess.

I was introduced to LW over two anti-LW articles and failed to see what any one was talking about.

Saying that it's more like math academia when you go further in (ie: actually make an account and post on LW itself) is a compliment.