“Three flaws above all are common among the beisutsukai. The first flaw is to look just the slightest bit harder for flaws in arguments whose conclusions you would rather not accept. If you cannot contain this aspect of yourself then every flaw you know how to detect will make you that much stupider. This is the challenge which determines whether you possess the art or its opposite: Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself.”
“The second flaw is cleverness. To invent great complicated plans and great complicated theories and great complicated arguments—or even, perhaps, plans and theories and arguments which are commended too much by their elegance and too little by their realism. There is a widespread saying which runs: ‘The vulnerability of the beisutsukai is well-known; they are prone to be too clever.’ Your enemies will know this saying, if they know you for a beisutsukai, so you had best remember it also. And you may think to yourself: ‘But if I could never try anything clever or elegant, would my life even be worth living?’ This is why cleverness is still our chief vulnerability even after its being well-known, like offering a Competitor a challenge that seems fair, or tempting a Bard with drama.”
“The third flaw is underconfidence, modesty, humility. You have learned so much of flaws, some of them impossible to fix, that you may think that the rule of wisdom is to confess your own inability. You may question yourself so much, without resolution or testing, that you lose your will to carry on in the Art. You may refuse to decide, pending further evidence, when a decision is necessary; you may take advice you should not take. Jaded cynicism and sage despair are less fashionable than once they were, but you may still be tempted by them. Or you may simply—lose momentum.”
Were we ever told the other two?
Yes, by Jeffreyssai: