Thor's microphone is in surprisingly good shape, for how often he's dropped it with his advice

pascals wager of self improvement

My grandma used to say something along the lines of "Learn all you can because even if you dont need it maybe you can teach someone else" I've always appreciated that sentiment.

The question is not 'If I should learn', the question is 'WHAT I should learn' and for this AI being there is very relevant.

His advice fits so well with the medium of shorts because he is concise, logical, and never bullsh*ts. So refreshing.

Reminds me what my dad said, if you stop learning, then you aren't living

The "always keep learning" path as a software guy makes me so exhausted. It's not like you have free time to do other things. You have to always keep learning

“Invest in yourself. Don’t worry about it” 👌very good

Thor is the best man, straight wholesome life advice and democracy!

It hurts me to see people give up on improving themselves.

Welding is a perfect example. I went to school to learn welding and one of the first assignments we had to do was read a paper about the automation of the industry. The message of the paper boiled down to "it's easier to teach a welder to maintain and run a welding machine than to train a programmer to do it."

Plot twist: the stuffs you learn are the stuffs that get taken over by AI

Applying game theory to self-improvement is not what I expected

How does this guy give such good life advice, with Ms paint illustrations, mid helldivers session.

I'm aiming for option 2, but I'm expecting option 5 (i learned a bunch but it wasn't enough and i loose anyway)

Sadly some people dont have all the opportunities to "learn shit". I do, but some dont

To see a twitch streamer literally teaching truth tables and logic fundamentals is such a heart warming thing. Don't stop doing your thing Thor, you are a true force of good on the internet.

I appreciate that he talks about these life subjects. He always gives me the motivation I need to keep doing stuff that makes me happy.

What's so crushing for me is that AI isn't coming for my job, it's coming for my passion. In my field there are certain things an AI will just never be able to do, but those parts of the job are also the most soul crushing. AI is coming for the fun parts, the creative parts... The parts that bring me joy. I'm not gonna be out of a job anytime soon, but AI sure is sucking the joy out of it.

Unless this is really out of context, this has got to be Thor's worst take. Pascal's Wagering your way through a systemic attack on labor markets across dozens of industries will not, in fact, be an effective protective mechanism from the intended outcome, which is, speaking statistically to those reading this, your wages being suppressed or you being removed from the labor force entirely because it makes line go up.

This is an extremely simplistic view of new technology making people's jobs redundant. The idea that people who work 10hrs a day or work multiple jobs have superfluous time or money to invest in themselves, I think, is very shortsighted.

While in theory this is good advice, it ignores the time and potential cost of spending the time learning in general or learning one thing over another, time that people in many cases do not have, or who cannot afford to pay to learn in , or who do not have the ability to learn due to any other circumstances. learning a given skill is a gamble on whether you will benefit, or suffer due to not having done something else, while this model assumes learning is a free task that always benefits you, and that your changed job is still fulfilling providing it was already pre AI. Long Edit: I really should have stated that I still think that learning when and where you can is good, but that it think this "Pascal's wager" model of learning is flawed because everything has an opportunity cost that is not factored in: Not learning a new thing gives more time to spend with family, or working towards a promotion, or sleeping which could leave you happier in the long run. There are always going to be better and worse things to learn, I'm sure that everyone has had subjects that they spent time learning that they wish they hadn't had to, and the bit about "learning is an intrinsic reward" misses that not all learning is equal, different topics and skills require different learning approaches that may have less cross compatibility and benefit provided, than practicing and enhancing existing skills. Lots of people simply do not have the time or option to do so effectively, but are given advice like this that while well meaning, misses the point that in order to learn enough, they have to sacrifice sleep, free time or work hours, all of which can leave you worse off either mentally or financially: Unhappy people also struggle more with work, and doing less work makes you easier to fire. In short, learning is good and can have great payouts if things work out, but it isn't a free action and the value gained is never guaranteed to outweigh what you could have had in terms of time spent relaxing, with family and friends, practicing existing skills or finding a new job and it is unhelpful and unfair to shame people for not learning when they either made a choice to do something else, or didn't have a choice. (To be clear Thor is not doing this but lots of people do do so, so I thought I'd make that point too)

I'd like to open a quick discussion on this short: the 3rd option should actually result in a positive outcome, rather than a negative one. If you listen to his reasoning, it's... weird? "You get nothing and the AI is not there to stop"? (paraphrased). Stop what? What does that mean? The real outcome is that the AI didn't take your job, you didn't learn anything new, but you *get to keep your job* which was the original premise of being afraid of AI taking your job. The actual game here is that by choosing whether to learn stuff or not learn stuff, given the current criteria, you have either a 100% good outcome, or a 50/50 good/bad outcome. It's still always better to choose to learn new things, but if the AI doesn't take your job, you're still safe. Unless what he means is that AI isn't going to stop advancing and it will 100% take your job eventually anyway, which would make the 3rd option redundant as it's the same as the 1st option.

If you think about, the goal of AI is to automate or replace junior positions or tasks that form the junior position making the junior position basically redundant. For a lot of industries AI will not currently replace senior or expert positions, but the gateway to get into those positions is experience from the junior role. Right now whether people realize it or not we have a race between AI advancing so rapidly to replace the senior position or everyone in the senior positions no longer being in those positions. It's a crazy time we live in now, just wait a decade or two, that will be insane

Not everyone is as great as you and what you do and can’t get to that level through own shortcomings or life factors. You are great because you put in the effort and have natural talent. I think AI threatens people trying to get by that don’t have the opportunity to put in the effort they want to

Such wisdom, thanks J

Its not about learning. I know i could adapt. I know i could manage in a world where ai takes over art. It wouldn't change how miserable id become. My dedication, my dream, my love of creation, all made worthless in the eyes of the world. Words i hoped may one day inspire others to create something of their own, or change their lives for the better, they are muted and never reach the people i hoped. I'd be okay if my stories inspired even one person. With what Ai is doing, i might not even get to have that happen.

“Let’s say AI takes your job away and you learned nothing, nothing happens” Thor just casually saying losing your job and not planning for it is nothing 😂

But the real question is what do you learn? If I dump my skill points into a skill tree that's just going to get nerfed and the game has no skill tree reset option, I'm suboptimal for endgame content.

HOLY SHIT IM GOING TO SCHOOL RIGHT NOW FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN AND I NEEDED THIS. The Helldivers loading music gives so much to this lol. Thanks Thor

There are so many shorts (including this one) that I wish I could just shout “YES, YES, YES!” through some “super-like” button for how awesome I think the advice is and how much I agree with it. Honestly, these shorts really are a wonderful beacon of encouragement and hope in my otherwise fairly stress and worry-filled life.

Ah but you forgot the "AI does/doesn't take your job in the future *_and_* you learn something utterly useless that doesn't pay the bills and die" scenario that is oh so much more likely.

While it is a good idea to learn new stuff, the assumption here is that you can learn something that the AI cant eventually do well enough that it replaces you and that I think isnt going to hold water indefinitely.

While I love Thor, and normally agree with him, in this case I can't. At the pace AI is currently developing, we cannot keep up with their level of learning capacity and speed unfortunately. It will subsume us, even if we try our best "learning".

So what I learned is that I always lose. Thanks.

Join the trades is what i did. My job literally cannot be done by AI because things are so complex and require a set of hands to work on.

Exactly why I’ve been learning more languages recently! Gotta make the most of your time!

This gives me so much more motivation to do art

What if AI takes everything? A lot of jobs are on the line. Businesses will have the ability to not deal with employees anymore

What I like most about this dude, is that how he manages to bring out so sincere and actual useful advice, in a way which makes it sound very profound and delivers the positivity, and still be silly at other times.

"The outcome is that nothing happens" except now I don't have a job.

eeeh although some of what he said is true, I feel that come from someone that didnt had to deal with losing his job because of it. A big problem atm is that a lot of ppl are losing their job, and I dont mean lazy ppl. Its something that ppl dont know unless they are directly in the industry and see all the head fall one by one. The dmg of all that will be seen in a couple years. Its true you need to adapt and learn, but right now that changes nothing, and the losers in the end will be all of us, devs and consumer alike.

And people wonder why some people don't wanna continue to live and deal with the stress on improving constantly

"If you don't believe in yourself, then you'll never believe in somebody believin' in you" -Joyner lucas

But the number of jobs will go down as will resources available. Its musical chairs. And we're all playing it.

Ah yes, I will pay my mortgage with shit I've leant.

Thor, the way i invested in myself was learning to write books alongside my job... Now I still think human writing (not necessarily mine) is better than AI, but prose was one of the first things to get "good enough" I'm still going to keep learning and writing, but I'm not under any illusions any more that writing could support my family if i was made redundant

The second one should equal uncertain, since who knows if or how much the skills you learn can be adapted.

You'd think for a guy who makes shit, he would have a better take on AI. In that whether it's the future, now or other dimensions it's harmful to artists, and the onus should not be on them. *edited for better punctuation

I think the same idea can be applied to anyone feeling like they are struggling. You can't control everything, but there are things within your control you can change for the better. Putting all the blame on things outside of your control, is actually something within your control!

Thor coming in with literally the right kind of music for this pep talk

This is very similar to a quote i often say "The only way and experience, good or bad, can be a waste of time is if you choose to learn nothing from it"

First sane take on AI I've heard. Very clean explanation too. Liberty provides.

You can't adapt to a machine that's a tousand time faster you ever will.

Love that he always does all of this in microsoft paint, it's kind of satisfying to watch.

The straight fire gold corns coming from Thor is amazing!

Lmao the problem with the second logic is that AI takes the job away and you learn a bunch of stuff but those are the stuff that can be covered by AI then where does that leave you?

Thats insane to say that investing in yourself is the answer to your job becoming obsolete. Imagine a truck hits you at 90mph and during your eulogy the priest just says "Yeah anyway he got owned and this is why I always drink my milk."

Love this message just so hard to get motivated when you see everything crumbling around you. Adapt, grow, and overcome.

The Helldivers track in the background makes this extra inspiring

"Don't worry about AI" is probably what they said prior to the events in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

I lost all passion. I don't have the patience to learn anymore. The education system crushed my spirit and left me with tons of wasted potential that weighs on me every day.

That truth table is a pep talk people need rn

I learned today one of my co workers was laid off from the bank becauseof AI, the first time was after 24 years...the second was only a few years in (different bank) then she pivoted to something new and is now at our current job. It has already happened and she is okay. Businesses dont care about you no matter what so save waht little you can and know you'll be alright.

Cool now none of the skills I learned are for any current market and im back on minimum wage. Hypotheticals are fun when you dont have your choices limited to begin with

That is 100% incorrect and I'm very disappointed at you for saying that. I'm a character artist in the industry and companies are trying to get AI working to replace jobs like mine. It doesn't matter if I learn how to adapt to it because by nature, companies want to cut costs. That means they want AI to replace multiple workers with just 1 or 2 to work with the AI. If you think this is still nothing to worry about, that's because you lack empathy for all the people who, despite adapting, will fail to get picked to remain and will never get picked in the future. Not to mention that if AI takes over jobs and you don't adapt, things do change. You lose your job! I don't know how you managed to miss this extremely important fact. I am so utterly disappointed with the narrow sightedness and lack of empathy of a fellow dev like you. I seriously looked up to you because you always talk about taking care of oneself is important, but I guess I was wrong to feel that way. I hope you broaden your horizons in the future.

it is, like, 100% more epic advice with the Helldivers ost than it should be.

As an artist, thank you this means a lot. The knowledge that you can still GAIN knowledge and that you’ll eventually ADAPT if you lose somewhere which to me sounds like building CONFIDENCE.

Yeah don't worry about paying your bills or necessities as long as you learn. And don't worry about all that debt you have from studying for years on end, great advice.

I'd say this doesnt work out for ai art. You can always improve yourself, but at a certain point the Ai will be good enough to pass you. It might not pass you in quality, but it will be in quality AND in your own art style. Someone makes an Ai and filters/trains it for your art while producing art thousands of times faster than you... Even being able to sell the art at a much lower price.😢

This is why I take EVERY training opportunity my job offers me. I've blown through training budgets in multiple years.

Thor should do battle speeches for the helldivers

The idea that you always have to be improving yourself is so goddamn stressful though. Like when do I get to relax?

Regarding AI art as an artist, i think it be great as a tool for artist for easy visualisation/guide for us to make our art. Unfortunately tech bros decide to think this is a flat out replacment, and the databases most these come to generate the art are often from stolen art without the actual artist consent, making it's one good use unviable.

I needed this today. Man, been feeling a little burned out

Started learning Python, Thor spits amazing knowledge and i wish there were compilations of em because it's genuinely life changing, thank you🎉

Well said!

From what I've gathered from my field of work is that some people don't want to learn anything new is because they're comfortable in their current duties and don't want to expand because they don't want more responsibilities without increase in pay.

Thanl you was legit having a dilemma for college thanks homie

The helldivers music made this the perfect motivational speech

You can easily learn things and still lose. That's wildly optimistic.

True, but you also have to think very hard about what can you learn that can't be taken over by AI.

The most underrated advice giver in the western hemisphere

Thanks, Thor. Every day I wake up thinking about giving up, but you're always helping me to get my shit together and hold on for the stuff I love. I would love to see you playing my game once it's finished

What isn't factored in here is that in the current job climate you Will be taken advantage of. Qualifying yourself for higher grade work will only result in you being given more work with a minimal raise unless you're willing to jump from company to company each time

Hey I'm planning on going to college to learn 3D animation next year and specialize in rigging so i can work in the video game industry and move out to the US, AI was a bit scary for me until now and i was a bit scared of wasting my time in college. But I'm not anymore because of you, big thanks from France Thor

Love this short, I think we all need more help and guidance like this as our world continues to evolve and change, because it can be easy to fall into a place of confusion or get overwhelmed. Thank you Thor!

The helldivers 2 music in the background really makes this clip.

Let’s say that AI in the future has taken ALL jobs and corporations still make you pay for everything… Yeah, not that easy to “reinvent” your entire life when it all gets taken away for greed and profit 😂 Not that it’s easy to begin with even IF AI only took away SOME jobs…

The issue with ai is that it is going to ruin industries. That's the issue. You won't notice it, until it is a bit too late.

The music in the background really adds to this

The music always perfectly timed to the speeches without effort

This is so bloody motivating with the background sounds of democracy

"you can adapt to AI taking your job away" what pure unmitigated cope

your channel has helped me alot during these last couple rough months especially being unemployed thank you for #beingyou

Never too young to start learning, never too old to learn something new.

He’s the father we all need and want to be 😂

Thor had to bust out the 2-bit truth table to explain it louder for the people in the back

That soundtrack made me think I forgot to close my game tab

lol I was afk in HD2 while watching this and thought your background sounds were my game tripping out XD