Spencer Greenberg is a thoughtful guy.

He has a PhD in applied math and has published papers on a variety of topics in applied math, machine learning, mental health and social science. He also has given TED talks and has a website filled with essays on those topics and more.

And Spencer isn’t just a guy who just has thoughts. He actually does something with them.

Spencer is the founder and CEO of Spark Wave, a company that tries to “solve big problems in the world.” And one company that Spark Wave created is Clearer Thinking, which offers a bevy of free tools to help you make better decisions and reduce biases -- which you should check out, at clearerthinking.org.

Sounds like a guy we needed to talk to, right?

Well, we did.

On July 9th, 2020. Spencer took some time to join us here inside of the THINKERS Workshop to help us identify some common thinking traps that can lead us into making bad decisions.

We discuss:

• What cognitive biases are, why we have them, and why they can lead to poor decisions.
• Strategies for overcoming cognitive biases (to the extend that we can).
• A few specific examples of cognitive biases and how they can hurt and help us.
• The importance of nuanced thinking.
• The three different types of dichotomous thinking (truth binary, goodness binary, identification binary) and the antidote for each one.
• How Spencer approaches conversations with people who are deep in throes of dichotomous thinking.
• How to approach a conversation with someone whose mind you want to change.
• When to use intuitive decision-making and when to use reflective decision-making.
• The power of writing to clarify of thinking.
• Habits Spencer recommends to anyone who wants to become a better thinker.
• Two book recommendations for better thinking.

And more. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation. And Spencer is able to say a lot in few words -- the benefit of him having spent so much time ruminating and writing on these topics.

He also answers a few audience questions:

• What should parents be teaching their kids?
• How do we make sure our confidence doesn't drift into self-delusion?
• Which thinking models are foundational for building better thinking skills?

You may need to listen a few times to take it all in.