I was cognizant that I am the architect of my own mind, and used those powers.

Could you perhaps elaborate on how exactly you managed to "exotically self-modify"? Was it just the "aha!" moment you mentioned, or was it the meditation?

When I tried to do something similar a while ago (albeit probably with different methods), I just got null results. So what did you do that produced such undoubtedly strong effects?

(My current fide rating is ~1500 elo (~37 percentile) and my peak rating was ~1700 elo (~56 percentile)).

While I'm not that good at chess myself, I think you got some things wrong, and on some I'm just being nitpicky.

My rating on lichess blitz is 1200, on rapid is 1600, which some calculator online said would place me at ~1100 ELO on the FIDE scale.

I’m quite skeptical of such conversions, but I understand you had nothing better to go on. This website (made from surveying a bunch of redditors ^[1]) converts your lichess blitz rating into 1005, 869 ^[2], 828 elo for fide standard, rapid and blitz respectively. Your rapid lichess rating would indicate 1210, 1125, 1194. Make of that, what you will.

In comparison, a chess master is ~2200, a grandmaster is ~2700.

People above 2700 are customarily considered super GM’s. I wasn’t able to download the latest rating list of the Fide website, but according to the standard rating list from september 2022 the average GM fide rating ^[3] is 2498.

I also have some squabbles with the way you wrote about piece relative value, but I understand you’re just oversimplifying for a layman audience. 

1. ^{^}

   I wasn’t able to find the original post.

2. ^{^}

   The minimum fide rating is a 1000, so anything below that is Fide unrated.

3. ^{^}

   Only considering players that played at least a single rated game in the last 12 months, otherwise their fide rating becomes inactive.

I recently figured out a great way of restoring my hands to baseline functionality after they‘ve been exposed to cold for an extended period of time. It goes like this:

1. Put your hands under warm water for a minute or so. This will make your blood vessels dilate.
2. With your arms extended, rapidly bring your hands up and down about 10-20 times. This motion helps to improve circulation by using centrifugal force to bring blood into your hands.

I've tried this technique a few times and it seems to be vastly more effective than just using hot water alone.

I hope someone finds this helpful during the winter.

Have you tried generating images with prompts that only describe the general vibe of a picture, without hinting at the content? Something like: "The best painting in history", "A very scary drawing", "A joyous photo".

Could you elaborate as to why you think "need is a strong word"?

The lesswrong word counter tells me that this post is, 67927 words long. Is it a mistake?

Could you elaborate on why this study is dubious?  Is it because of the small number of participants? Is the test that was used to assess recognition of notes deeply flawed? Or maybe valproate just can’t possibly increase neuroplasticity?

I’m asking because I read this around a year ago, and to this day I’m puzzled as to why no one tried to replicate the findings.