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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.

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98 You don't get to have cool flaws

by Neil

28th Jul 2023

2 min read

98

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.

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^{^}

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.

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[-]Vladimir_Nesov2y3711

That's advice, not everyone is on the same side of a reasonable equilibrium it might be pointing towards. Like, premature optimization is not effectiveness, slack is vital.

[-]Neil2y10

Thanks, added a disclaimer. It's an important disclaimer indeed: this advice was originally aimed at me personally so I should be quite careful when publishing it, to guard against what could be terrible advice to some or most.

[-]Kaj_Sotala2y3625

I think this post contains a reasonable caution, but I get a pretty negative reaction from the tone. Especially the title and this bit

You’re not allowed to identify as these flaws. You aren’t allowed to revel in them and feel proud of them.

My instinctive reaction to this is "I'm allowed to identify with whatever I like, you don't get to tell me what I'm allowed to do". The post reads to me as the author trying to unilaterally impose their personal ideal of perfection on other people.

I think it's also a bit inconsistent to say that flaws are bad because they get in the way of your goals and therefore you shouldn't identify with them - since if you identify with your flaws, then maintaining your flaws is one of your goals, and thus they don't get in the way of your goals. Or to put it another way, why can't "how I look getting there" be a goal by itself?

[-]Daniel V2y1311

I agree with Neil here: if you identify with your flaws, that is bad. By definition. If you are highly analytical and you identify with it, great, regardless of if other people see it as a flaw. Like you said and Neil's reply in the footnote, if it's a goal, then it is not a flaw. But if you say it is a personal flaw, then either you shouldn't be adopting it into your identity (you don't even have to try to fix it as noble as that would be, but you don't get to say "I'm the bad-at-math-person, it's so funny and quirky, and I just led my small business and partners into financial ruin with an arithmetic mistake," life is not a sit-com) or maybe you don't really see it as a flaw after all. Either way, something is wrong, either in your priorities or the reliability of your self-reports. And, yeah, this topic involves value judgments. If nothing has valence, then the notion of a flaw would not exist.

[-]Neil2y72

I'd be worried that "identifying as having a flaw" can begin as something merely aesthetic at first and end up deeply warping your lens of the world in the end. If "is known as the pessimist" or "is known as the optimist" becomes something you start wanting to live up to, I feel like you could do real damage to your empirical rationality. I guard myself against "aesthetic flaws" personally because they don't seem to be worth the amount of course-correcting I'd have to engage in just to keep an accurate-enough view of the world. I added a footnote though, thanks for the feedback.

[-]Kaj_Sotala2y31

Yeah, I agree with those points.

[-]Dentosal2y43

Or to put it another way, why can't "how I look getting there" be a goal by itself?

Bigger the obstacles you have to overcome, the more impressive it looks to others. This can be valuable by itself, but in such situations it might be more efficient to reduce the actual flaw, and simply pretend that the effect is bigger. However, honesty is important, and honesty to yourself even more so.

since if you identify with your flaws, then maintaining your flaws is one of your goals

If a flaw is too hard to remove now, you have to figure out a way to manage it. Feeling proud about your capablity despite the flaws is also definitely useful. If you're identifying with a flaw to motivate yourself, that can be a powerful tool. But when the opportunity aries to eradicate that flaw cheaply, dismiss the sunken cost of keeping the flaw. Evaluate whether keeping that flaw is actually your goal, or just a means.

Let me not become attached to personal flaws I may not want.

[-]Person2y41

The post reads to me as the author trying to unilaterally impose their personal ideal of perfection on other people.

I can't say I had the same observation regarding the post, but I just wanted to agree with the problem you describe. It irks me when people attempt to categorize flaws and build up a model of biological perfection, not realizing all the consequences, psychological and social alike, that it entails. It seems like a very naïve endeavor rooted in personal biases more than an objective assessment.

[-]Ilio2y12

My instinctive reaction to this is "I'm allowed to identify with whatever I like, you don't get to tell me what I'm allowed to do". The post reads to me as the author trying to unilaterally impose their personal ideal of perfection on other people.

That was my instinctive reaction too, but there’s a charitable reading where the tone is primarily for internal use, e.g. for when you have trouble escaping a failure mode and you’d like to have a strong catchphrase already prepared for the next time you need it.

Say you’re procrastinating, then playing the game of identifying yourself with having this flaw may be one way your brain hide that you’re procrastinating for a reason you’re not confortable to admit. Once you noticed this might be a partial explanation, then you usually don’t want to be a procrastinator, but a rational person looking to overcome the limitations of its hardware.

[-]Slimepriestess2y167

well yes but also no. don't get attached to your flaws, but be willing to give them space to exist, beware optimizing too much of yourself away or you'll end up in potentially some very nasty self destructive spirals.

[-]belkarx2y1411

Bad sleep schedule is another good example of something that gets romanticised when it shouldn’t.

[-]Neil2y50

Yep. The worst thing I've seen romanticized in my milieu though is poor mental health: for some reason it's quite "cool" to say you're depressed all the time, and while I know some of my friends are actually genuine, I'm not comfortable with the social pull toward the depression aesthetic. It's so weird.

[-]niknoble2y133

The problem with this is that one day you'll see someone who has the same flaw you've been trying to suppress in yourself, and they just completely own it, taking pride in it, focusing on its advantages, and never once trying to change it. And because they are so self-assured about it, the rest of the world buys in and views it as more of an interesting quirk than a flaw.

When you encounter that person, you'll feel like you threw away something special.

[-]Screwtape11mo103Review for 2023 Review

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.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley1y102Review for 2023 Review

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.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1y78

Law of equal (or not so equal) opposite advice: The are some - probably few - flaws that you can keep because they are small and not worth the effort to fix or make you more lovable and unique.

Example:

I'm a very picky eater. No sauces, no creams, no spicy foods. Lots of things excluded. It limits what i can eat and i always have to explain.

But don't presume any flaw you are attached to falls into this category. I'm also not strongly convinced of this.

[-]Neil1y83

Yeah that'd go into some "aesthetic flaws" category which presumably has no risk of messing with your rationality. I agree these exist. And I too am picky.

[-]Perhaps2y60

I think this is pretty good advice. I am allergic to nuts, and that has defined a small but occasionally significant part of my interactions with people. While on the whole I'd say I've probably experienced more negative experiences because of it(once went into anaphylaxis), I've often felt that it marked me as special or different from other people.

About 5 or so years ago my mom heard about a trial run by a doctor where they fed you small amounts of what you're allergic to in order to desensitize and acclimate your immune system to the food. She recommended it to me, but I being a stubborn teenager refused, the idea of losing my specialness a not insignificant part of my reasoning. At the time I was actually explicit about it, and felt that it was fine to want to keep a condition I'd kept for a long time.

Nowadays my allergies are going away on their own, and while I still stay away from nuts I can tolerate them in small amounts. While I think that there might be people for whom keeping a condition would be reasonable, I think in general people underestimate and grow too attached to the occasionally malignant parts of their identity.

It's very similar in fact to not letting go of wrongful ideas that are enjoyable to have. In that case, the comparison is clear. While biological conditions are not so easy to get rid of, people can and will blame you for not changing your mind about something that affects them. We're on LessWrong after all, what would be the point if we let something get in the way of our truth-seeking?

[-]James Stephen Brown7mo30

This hit home for me, as I can quite easily create psychosomatic conditions for myself, and often I will notice someone's flaws, which make them seem tortured, artistic or mysterious and pine (successfully) for that same flaw, I remember after watching a
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I developed a blinking issue (like Pitt's portrayal of James) and after listening to John Green talk about his struggles with anxiety, I developed a major anxiety issue, neither of these were cool or mysterious, but instead made me look and feel like an idiot.

I also find myself taking pride in "over-thinking" as if that's somehow a mark of great intelligence, when in fact it's an irritating characteristic that alienates friends and creates problems that are entirely avoidable.

Personally I like the "You’re not allowed to identify as these flaws." approach of this post, and intend to employ this in life. Thanks for giving me a fresh perspective on this issue.

[-]James Stephen Brown7mo30

[-]Neil7mo50

honored.

[-]Neil11mo32Review for 2023 Review

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.

[-]Hastings1y30

export INSTRUMENTAL_GOAL=change_yourself

Keep track of your past attemts to $INSTRUMENTAL_GOAL, so that you can better predict whether your future attempts to $INSTRUMENTAL_GOAL will succeed, and so better choose between plans that require $INSTRUMENTAL_GOAL and plans that route around it.

[+]Mark Sulik2y-80

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