You don’t get to have cool flaws
This post seems particularly relevant to LW, which to me has a “save the world” culture and is filled with the “misunderstood burden-carrier” trope types. However: it has been justly describes as advice; please take with a grain of salt.
tl;dr: Solve the flaws you find in yourself and don’t get attached to them.
I’ve been noticing something recently: while doing casual things among laughing friends, on bright Summer days when I reciprocally smile at life, I revel in some sort of inner somberness which feels “cool” to me. It feels like secretly being Batman or Frodo Baggins; carrying a heavy wound and burden on the inside and being a dark vigilante who fights crime by night dressed up as a flying mammal. I figure it’s what Oppenheimer felt like sometimes; pretending to be present in small talk while thinking about Very Serious Things.[1]
Oppenheimer Mode turns on when I’m thinking of misaligned AI and what I could do about it. It turns on when I look at fellow humans and think that they are something to protect. It turns on when I start narrating my own life and watch it from the outside like it’s a book or movie.
“Has poor mental health” is a flaw. It is an obstacle in between me and my goals. Here are a few other common obstacles: “is overly analytical”; “is overly romantic”; “has only casual relationships”; “is lazy”; “is easily distracted”; “is bad at math”; “is ignorant of social conventions”; “never sleeps enough”; “is too cynical”; “is too naive”; “makes bad arguments”; “is bad with money”; “has addiction X”. There are many more; think them up for me, please. You’re probably full of them. In particular: which flaws do you particularly identify with?
You’re not allowed to identify as these flaws. You aren’t allowed to revel in them and feel proud of them.[2] I’m not allowed to be proud of being gloomy: being gloomy doesn’t help me and so I won’t revel in it. What matters is my goals, not how I look getting there. No one has ever become Great without internalizing that lesson.
I like the idea of the Flawed but Great Human; that’s why I liked Oppenheimer. But I won’t, as I might have before, start “acting like Oppenheimer” at random moments by looking aloof, distant, and acting like I had 220,000 deaths on my hands. I’m not going to look at interesting figures of the past I’d like to emulate in some ways (some ways!) and end up checking the “flaws” checkbox off before the “qualities” checkbox.[3]
The flaws checkbox is already checked. No matter what you do, you will still be a foolish monkey who will commit innumerable and unique errors across its lifetime. You don’t get to pick and choose what those errors are. The crucial lesson is that those Flawed but Great figures solved the flaws they knew about. They did not fall for the “keep a flaw because it looks cool” failure mode and thus eliminated a sufficient amount of flaws for them to make history.[4]
If you really want to emulate the greats make sure to detect your flaws and then promptly destroy them. This isn’t “kill your darlings”; your flaws shouldn’t have been your darlings in the first place.
- ^
I am listening to the soundtrack of the movie as I write this.
- ^
Kaj_Sotala mentioned that “flaws” could become part of your identity; that if looking cool along the way is what you want, then your flaws are your goals and are no longer obstacles.
Let me rephrase this then: what you would yourself identify as a flaw is probably not something you want attached to your identity. If you keep it nonetheless after thinking about the pros and cons of keeping it attached, I wouldn’t call it a flaw anymore. So if the cocaine is what keeps you running, whatever man, the hedons might be worth the cost.
- ^
As Screwtape points out, flaws are also tempting because they’re vastly easier to emulate than qualities.
- ^
Also the flaws they ended up keeping didn’t seem “cool” to them.
This post makes an easy to digest and compelling case for getting serious about giving up flaws. Many people build their identity around various flaws, and having a post that crisply makes the case that doing so is net bad is helpful to be able to point people at when you see them suffering in this way.
This essay is an example of the ancient LessWrong genre, “dumb mistakes your brain might be making which feel obvious once someone points them out.” I love this genre, and think You Don’t Get To Have Cool Flaws should be included in the Best Of LessWrong posts.
It’s so easy to make this mistake! In fiction, complex and beloved characters have flaws. Fiction can set examples we try to live up to. Flaws are easier to emulate than virtues. I can’t train as hard as Batman, and I can’t be as wealthy as Batman, but I can brood! Brooding is easy! But the flaw isn’t why I want to be like Batman!
This is such a succinct essay that I worry my review might get longer than the essay itself and I’m just repeating the good points, but pointing out that people can identify with their flaws is worth the verbiage. Sure, perfection is hard, but flaws shouldn’t be accepted stable parts of yourself. Why would you ever operate like that? Because the flaw is cool? Because it’s been a part of me for a long time? Because it distinguishes me from other people nearby? Because it means less work? None of those are good reasons.
I’m not going to fix all my flaws tomorrow, but I can at least remember that they are things I would fix if I could snap my fingers and change myself however I wanted.
I wrote this after watching Oppenheimer and noticing with horror that I wanted to emulate the protagonist in ways entirely unrelated to his merits. Not just unrelated but antithetical: cargo-culting the flaws of competent/great/interesting people is actively harmful to my goals! Why would I do this!? The pattern generalized, so I wrote a rant against myself, then figured it’d be good for LessWrong, and posted it here with minimal edits.
I think the post is crude and messily written, but does the job.
Meta comment: I notice I’m surprised that out of all my posts, this is the one that seems most often revisited (e.g. getting 2 reviews for Best of LW, which I did not expect). I’m updating against karma as a reliable indicator of long-term value as a result: 2 posts I wrote got twice the karma, but were never interacted with beyond their first month. I think they must have been somewhat inspired by hype-shaped memes.
This is an endorsement of the Review function! It has successfully weeded out popular-but-superficial posts of mine and taught me to prioritize whatever’s going on in this post. Karma alone has failed to do this.