Steve Hsu - Intelligence, Embryo Selection, & The Future of Humanity

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:00)
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Steve Hsu. Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. I'm excited about this.

**Steve Hsu** (0:04)
Hey, it's my pleasure. I'm excited too. And I just want to say I've listened to some of your earlier interviews and thought you were very insightful, which is why I was really excited to have a conversation with you.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:14)
That means a lot for me to hear you say, because I'm a big fan of your podcast. My first question is, what advice did Richard Feynman give you about picking up girls?

**Steve Hsu** (0:27)
So one day in the spring of my senior year, I was walking across campus and I see Feynman coming toward me, and we knew each other from various things. It's a small campus, and I was a physics major and he was my hero. So I guess I had known him since my freshman year.
So he sees me and he's got this, I don't know if it's long, I guess it's a Long Island or it's some kind of New York borough accent. And he says, Hey Hsu, this is how he says my name, Hey Hsu. And I'm like, Hi, Professor Feynman. And so we start talking.
And he says to me, Wow, you're kind of a big guy. And I was a lot bigger then because I played on the, I was a linebacker on the Celtic football team. So I was about almost 200 pounds. I'm a little just over six feet tall. And so I was pretty like a gym rat at that time. And so he was like, I was much bigger than him, obviously. He was like, Wow, you're a big guy, Steve. I got to ask you something. And Feynman was born in like 1918 So he's not really like from the modern era. Like he was, he was, I guess he was going through graduate school when the Second World War started. And so to him, the whole concept of a health club, a gym was like totally, you know, he couldn't understand it. And that was the era, this was the 80s. So that was the era when Gold's Gym was like becoming a world national franchise. And so there were gyms all over the place, 24 hour fitness and stuff like this. So he didn't know what it was. And he's a very interesting guy. So he, his suspicion, he says to me, what do you guys do there? Is that, is it just a thing to meet chicks, to meet girls, or do you guys actually, is it really for training? Do you guys really go there to get buff, to get big, you know? And so I started explaining to him, I said, yes, you know, people are there to get big, but people are also checking out the girls. And there is a lot of stuff happening at the health club or in the weight room.
And so, you know, he grills me on this for a long time. And one of the famous things about Feynman is that he, he has this laser like focus. So if there's something he really doesn't understand and he wants to get to the bottom of it, he will just focus in on you and just start questioning you and get to the bottom of it. That's the way his brain works. So he did that to me for like, I don't know how long, we were talking about lifting weights and everything, cause he didn't know anything about it. And at the end, he says to me, wow, Steve, I really appreciate that, you know, let me, you know, let me, let me give you some good advice. And so then he starts telling me about how to pick up girls and which I guess he, you know, he's a kind of an expert on. Yeah. And he says to me, he goes, he goes, one of the things he says to me is like, I don't know how much girls really like guys that are big as you. Like, I don't, I'm not, he thought like it might be a turnoff actually. And he said, but you know what, you have a nice smile. So that was, that was the one compliment fight, you know, he gives me, you have a nice smile. And then he starts telling me, he says, you know, the main thing is you, it's a numbers game.
Okay. You have to divorce your, you have to be totally rational about it. You're never going to see that girl again.
Right. You're, you're in an airport lounge or you're, you're, you're, you're at a bar. It's Saturday night in Pasadena or Westwood. And you're talking to some girl and he says, you're never going to see her again. This is your one interaction with her. Five minute interaction.