At least for myself , I first heard of Eliezer via the HPMOR TV Tropes page. There's a good chance I would have read the sequences sooner or later even if I hadn't (my brother found them independently and recommended them), but it definitely helped.

And I wouldn't say I was an idiot before, but twenty minutes of conversation with myself from a couple years ago might change my mind. And of course it's hard to tell how much of the difference is LW's influence and how much is just a matter of being older and wiser.