How to Be a Virtuous Person

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I think about virtue ethics as a set of kind of heuristics for a living. Like, okay, don't lie. Keep your promises. It would be the honorable thing. And I try to just get a day to day basis, apply those heuristics. But sometimes when you get into a more complex situation where either the stakes are a lot higher or there's more uncertainty about things, then I find it useful to do an analysis from more first principles on the thing. That's fun and rewarding but with the limited computation we have now as humans, it's tough to do.

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How can you live your best life? What's a good definition of "wisdom"? What are some possible taxonomies of life outcomes? What are some low-hanging fruit in the realm of self-improvement? What are some useful behavior change frameworks and techniques?

All his life, James Norris has been searching for the best ways to change himself and change the world. He started as an entrepreneur at age 6 and since has co-founded or helped build 9 businesses and 16 organizations, including the premier conference for the effective altruism movement, the world's first global lifehacking event series, Southeast Asia's first social innovation hackathon series, and a university for today's Leonardo da Vincis. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin as a triple major / quadruple minor. Find more about him at jamesnorris.org and upgradable.org.

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