I agree that virtues should be thought of as trainable skills, which is also why I like David Gross’s idea of a virtue gym:
Two misconceptions sometimes cause people to give up too early on developing virtues:
that virtues are talents that some people have and other people don’t as a matter of predisposition, genetics, the grace of God, or what have you (“I’m just not a very influential / graceful / original person”), and
that having a virtue is not a matter of developing a habit but of having an opinion (e.g. I agree that creativity is good, and I try to respect the virtue of creativity that way, rather than by creating).
It’s better to think of a virtue as a skill like any other. Like juggling, it might be hard at first, it might come easier to some people than others, but almost anyone can learn to do it if they put in persistent practice.
We are creatures of habit: We create ourselves by what we practice. If we adopt habits carelessly, we risk becoming what we never intended to be. If instead we deliberate about what habits we want to cultivate, and then actually put in the work, we can become the sculptors of our own characters.
What if there were some institution like a “virtue gymnasium” in which you could work on virtues alongside others, learning at your own pace, and building a library of wisdom about how to go about it most productively? What if there were something like Toastmasters, or Alcoholics Anonymous, or the YMCA but for all of the virtues?
Conversations with LLMs could be the “home gym” equivalent I suppose.
I agree that virtues should be thought of as trainable skills, which is also why I like David Gross’s idea of a virtue gym:
Conversations with LLMs could be the “home gym” equivalent I suppose.