The most important benefit from less wrong ist that before lw I hat a very fixed mindset of things I know and I don't, like if it were properties of the things in itself, and when I wanted to improve at something I just do it in a very vague directionless way.

A more concrete example is that I always liked modding video games but in modding is very limited what you can do comparing to coding, so at least once a year I make a half hearted attempt to learn get better at modding, which result in nothing because the next step always was to learn to code (which was in the "I can´t" bin ). After reading posts here of people doing awesome stuff , internalize that the map is not the territory and so, I realized that I could likely learn to code , an then the "I can't" bin broke. Exactly two years later know I'm fairly good with python , java and some of haskell just for the fun. I'm currently close to releasing an android game.

A life changing benefit I gain was to "cure" my social anxiety, it was mostly thanks to a post make here linking to Mark Manson, but it totally changed the way I interact with people from being all fear and uneasiness to flow and actually enjoying being around people (especially women).

Other less direct benefits are clearing a lot of philosophical confusion, save me from a couple of death spirals, I have the memorization problem mostly solved with spaced repetition, I change my mind more often, strategic thinking, meta-thinking and more stuff that's getting more abstract and I don't think is in the spirit of the question.

To answer the question, I DO think that my past self was dumber than me now, so in a way I'm gotten smarter.