Hey I can see why you think that. There were times when I had to reflect on whether I was doing it because I had set a goal of talking to one new person that day or doing it because I was actually interested in them. And I think both were true. There's a lot of people in the gym but I chose to talk to this specific person because of an exercise they were doing, a cool t-shirt they were wearing, or their awesome hair

I think that working out can be a mutual deep interest

Key word: rarely

It’s a numbers game with very low stakes to the downside and very high to the upside

> Genuine connection should be built on mutual deep interests

That's backwards. You can't find friends with "mutual deep interests" without talking to strangers. You have to first find out somehow whether there are mutual interests in the first place.

I thought the same thing. This was really uncomfortable for me.