You don't get to have cool flaws
(Which would kind of defeat the purpose of flaws.)
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”; “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.
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.3
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.
Also the flaws they ended up keeping didn’t seem “cool” to them.