The Six Secrets of Intelligence: Why modern education doesn't teach us how to think for ourselves

by Craig Adams

Some people have something to say in any conversation and can spot the hidden angles of completely unrelated problems; but how do they do it? So many books, apps, courses, and schools compete for our attention that the problem isn’t a lack of opportunity to sharpen our minds, it’s having to choose between so many options. And yet, more than two thousand years ago, the greatest thinker of Ancient Greece had already discovered the blueprint of the human mind. Despite the fact that the latest cognitive science shows his blueprint to be exactly what sharpens our reasoning, subtlety of thought, and ability to think in different ways and for ourselves, we have meanwhile replaced it with a simplistic and seductive view of intelligence, education and the mind. Condensing that blueprint to six 'secrets', Craig Adams uncovers the underlying patterns of every discussion and debate we’ve ever had, and shows us how to be both harder to manipulate and more skilful in any conversation or debate – no matter the topic.

Genres: Education, Self Help, Productivity, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Ryan Boissonneault · Rating 5 out of 5]

The irony of modern education (particularly K-12) is that the principles of general intelligence—the ability to form rational and insightful conclusions regardless of the subject—are simply not taught and almost entirely ignored. The more you think about it, the more unbelievable it is that we’ve allowed this to happen. It would be like deciding that mathematics is no longer to be taught because students can figure it out for themselves or can learn the aspects of mathematics necessary only for their jobs.

The modern educational model is centered on style over substance and the delivery of brute facts over the careful consideration of method. We teach our students historical facts and dates, but we don’t bother to show them how the historian evaluates the reliability of various primary sources and what to do when sources conflict. We teach students the names and order of the planets in our solar system, but we don’t bother to show them the nature of the scientific method or the importance of control groups, replication, large sample sizes, and peer-review. We teach facts but not the method used to discover those facts; we tell students what to believe, not how to think.

And then we wonder why the population can’t interpret the most basic scientific research, or why they can’t hold a reasonable discussion in politics without resorting to name-calling. It would be like refusing to teach math and then wondering why people can’t do basic algebra.

The Six Secrets of Intelligence might sound like a run-of-the-mill self-help book, but it is something far more sophisticated and important than that. Craig Adams demonstrates with exceptional skill and clarity the elements of general intelligence, why they’re not taught in schools, what the consequences are, and how to fix this. He argues, convincingly, that if we are to produce graduates with better thinking skills, we need to prioritize the teaching of philosophy, and particularly the teaching of the critical reasoning skills that underlie and are independent of every subject.

For anyone with experience in philosophy or informal logic, the ideas in this book will be anything but a secret (perhaps a better title would have been The Six Elements of Intelligence). Deduction, induction, analogy, reality, meaning, and evidence will be more than familiar to anyone with experience in philosophy or critical thinking. But that’s the point—if your education consists exclusively of formal K-12 education, these ideas WILL be secrets to you. If you’ve never been exposed to the abstract ideas that underlie better thinking, you will probably not be able to discover them on your own, just as you would likely never discover the ideas of algebra if you were never formally taught mathematics.

Adams argues that the mind does have a universal structure, and that this is obvious from the fact that we can still learn from a group of people that lived in a radically different culture speaking an entirely different language more than 2,000 years ago—the Ancient Greeks. We can learn from them because, unlike other tribes lost in the particulars of their own cultures, the Greeks searched for universal explanations that transcended any particular time and place. In particular, Aristotle was the first to catalogue the universal structure of the human mind and the universal principles of reasoning that underlie all of our beliefs and arguments.

Adams is claiming that we should explicitly teach these ideas—first discovered by Aristotle—as research in psychology demonstrates that people can reason more effectively after exposure to abstract ideas. Teach people about the law of large numbers, for example, and they perform significantly better on subsequent tests on statistical reasoning. If we teach our students the principles of effective deductive, inductive, and analogical reasoning—including what exactly makes an argument deceptive—they will be both better at argumentation themselves and less susceptible to manipulation. The result is that we’ll also get better politicians, because they will be held to a higher argumentative standard.

This is exactly what is missing in public education, and is exactly what is deficient in public discourse. We are overloaded with facts and statistics and we have no idea what to do with them. We mistrust science because we don’t understand it, and we are childishly superficial in our politics—not because we lack knowledge—but because we are oblivious to the most basic aspects of rationality.

The thing is, those aspects—contrary to the name of the book—are not secrets. They’ve been known for more than 2,000 years and have been expanded upon by modern psychology and philosophy. They are secret only in the sense that we refuse to teach them to the public in any meaningful way.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a deeper look into the structure of our minds and arguments. If you haven’t been exposed to these ideas, they are truly transformative, and Adams presents them in a clear, concise, and objective manner. You’ll also learn about why the educational system doesn’t teach these skills, and a potential way forward.

The book is not perfect, though. There is quite a bit of repetition in the book in terms of outlining the problem. Adams makes his case—quite persuasively—and then continues to harp on the point. To my surprise, he also fails to outline how exactly schools can update their curriculum. Should we incorporate these ideas in the teaching of the subjects themselves, e.g. by focusing on the method of doing history rather than a list of dates and events? Or should we teach these skills in separate classes? Or both? Should we just teach logic or expand the philosophy curriculum to cover all philosophical topics, like ethics and political philosophy (my preference). This was an opportunity for Adams to present his specific recommendations and, in my opinion, he missed it. Perhaps that will be the topic of his next book.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd one. Scientists are used to giving the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle a hard time - almost all of his science was wrong, and in some cases, his ideas misdirected scientific thinking for nearly a couple of thousand years. Worse was his apparent ability to ignore easily obtained evidence when it contradicted his ideas - infamously, he proclaimed that women have fewer teeth than men. Yet Craig Adams is clearly a huge fan of Aristotle and makes a reasonable case for the importance of his contribution to some of the more useful aspects of philosophy.

We're not talking navel-gazing here, but rather practical thinking on how to reason and understand better. The 'six secrets' that Adams mentions are deduction, induction, analogy, reality, evidence and meaning. While scientists will be familiar with many of these, they may not be totally clear on how they are used in practice (rather as many English speakers don't have technical knowledge of English grammar) - and for many without a scientific training, even as basic a concept as induction may be something of a mystery. (It's notable that many assume Sherlock Holmes used deduction, where he almost always relied on induction.) There are also some good examples of why correlation is not causality and we get a good feel for the way that this knowledge is particularly useful in spotting and dismissing illogical statements.

So, there is definitely some interesting and good material here. But, for me, the book didn't work awfully well. The presentation is wooly, lacking the clarity you would hope for in the presentation of such concepts to the general reader. It would also have been good to have had some of the modern tools of symbolic logic mentioned. There isn't enough narrative content and use of examples - rather the main points are repeated and become laboured. Things get worse in the second half of the book, where Adams makes a case for an alternative approach to education, based on giving students good thinking tools, combining Aristotelean thinking with what Adams calls 'the modern school of thought', typified by the work of Daniel Kahneman. There isn't anything wrong with these components, though I think that there is a far broader input required - but the way Adams' approach is presented is very unclear. This re-thinking of the curriculum has already been done far better in the RSA's Opening Minds project.

A few specific moans. Adams spends quite a while on deduction, yet doesn't really make it clear how infrequently it is useful in the real world where we rarely have universal/absolute truths available. And when talking about induction, Adams notes ‘induction is the process of creating universal rules from particular examples of signs’ - yet if there’s one thing science makes clear it’s that we can only have best guesses of universal rules. All current theories may well eventually be modified or disproved.

If you haven't been exposed to Aristotle's philosophy on thinking, the book is well worth exploring, but I wish it had been a little more clearly written.

[May Ling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: I was a fan. I agree with those that feel his presentation was a bit less than straight forward. But I think some go too far into the science and not realize the implications of logic in social science which is his main thrust. I'm a fan.

Please consider checking out my Vlog on Youtube: Diary of a Speed Reader on IG: WhereIsMayLing

p. 41 - Without concrete examples, there would be no abstract idea: theory and practice are inherently linked. However, as Aristotle knew, what transforms the way we think is the power of consciously understainding and being abe to explain overarching ideas."

p. 48 - The probably argument - This is a technique where you suggest a phrase that seems a bit extreme so that it piles doubt when logic is not clear. "This, Aristotle discovered, is one of the ways that people manipulate those who don't have a clear picture in their mind of what it means to be logical." It's a form of dubious deduction.

p. 49 - "The opportunity is that if everyone has accepted that proving the truth will be almost impossible, it opens the door for a barrage of doubt because all we have to go on is what's probable. What dubious deductions try to do is to use premises that work more often than not, and pass them off as universal ones."

p. 50 - "What Aristotle teaches us is not to say that someone's argument moves in an illogical way, but to point out the fact that it doesn't work because it started from a place that had no certainty to begin with. Being logical doesn't make you right. The key to unravelling dubious dedications is to be able to find the real heart of the argument. When people claim that thier argument or the reasoning that produced it, is logical, Aristotle teaches you not fight them on the groups of logic." You fight them on the premise itself from which the logic is then based.

p. 65 - "Not only do we misuse proverbs and Big Ideas, we are completely enthralled by a combination of two. Benjamin Franklin's 'those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety' is much more balanced than the version that's usually quoted - which omits the 'little' and occasionally the 'temporary." The actual context was a request to talk about how much safety ought one to give up for liberty. Certainly there would be some. What's the right balance.

p. 68 - The cost benefit approach is commonly used in a sophist argument.
"Killing birds is bad. Windmills kill birds. Therefore...windmills are bad"
Flawed deduction in a cost-benefit scenario would look like this:
"Killing birds is bad (but acceptable) Windmills kill birds. Therefore...windmills are bad (but acceptable)."
This would be a balanced view.
Alternatively:
"Killing eagles is a crime in California. Windmills kill eagles. Therefore... windmills are criminal."
"The conclusion of this deduction doesn't entirely add up, but that doesn't matter because... isn't making this arguments - he's only implying it." The flaw has to do with the idea of premeditated killing. These are hidden in arguments.

p. 83 - "When different memories have something in common, they become experience. When your mind notices that different memories of different situations are connected by 'the same thing' ou start to think of the memories not as separate, but as one. What transforms memories, making them into more than just a disorganized pile of sensation is our ability to see what they have in common." - This is induction.

p. 91-92 - His discussion on induction is that the mind will make all kind of patterns. It likes these patterns, but they are often wrong. I think it's from here that the news flow and social media manipulators attempt to impact individuals toward extremism.

p. 131 - Real Life Analogies - The example of the Swabian housewife and a government or nation. This has to do with the idea of debt and whether it make sense at the national level. The whole dynamic is entirely different, but it's used often as a form of logic.

p. 133 - "A good analogy clearly and precisely draws our attention to a likeness that matters between two situations or things: the similarity that gives us real insight into the way things work and the way things are. The problem with analogies is that when we compare two things, it isn't always clear which likeness is being drawn."
"The line between metaphorical language and analogical argument is thin." So if you use "rats" to describe people, even if you pretend as if the analogy is scurrying, all of the other elements of rats is ascribed to the people. This technique is very unique in how much it can carry with it when crafted.

p. 135 - He uses the example of the politician who suggested that Hitler started out a Zionist b/c what he wanted was the Jews to go back to Israel, just as Zionists do. That was really offensive to the Zionists b/c the politician missed all the more salient points of the metaphors.

p. 155 - Some words are particularly blank, "They tell us very little about what the person using them actually means."
In politics, words like 'good,'bad','better', 'brighter', 'stronger' and all their fuzzy friends have two main uses: to cover something up or to cover up nothing. If you have an opinion but aren't sure that it's what voters want to hear, then you can talk about how your plan is 'effective', 'decisive', and 'robust', and hope they won't notice you've said nothing."

p. 156 - "Blank words are, most often a smokescreen that politicians use to buy time."

p. 195 - 'The default position for human beings is to overgeneralise - to make inductive mistakes - but even that isn't the end of the story."

p. 214 - He talks about the way that the Sophists were the first to study patterns of the mind. That "the way we think has a fundamental and fixed structure, and it is one that we can understand."
Aristotle did this in the Organon, which people believe were his notes.

p. 219 - He talks about the idea that we believe in talent over technique. In fact technique gets you there in a much better way:
"The power of technique to transform what we're able to achieve isn't limited to the patterns of reasoning and truth; it's true of 'creative' endeavors too."
p. 233 - "Every conversation carries with it the danger of deep misunderstanding, and that misunderstanding is usually at it's deepest when its object is abstract" --- This is sadly nearly every business concept around.

p. 245 -- He finally gets down to what his point is about education. His point is that we are too concerned with what and have removed all concepts of just the thinking itself which ought to be the point.

p. 263 - He talks about confirmation bias

p. 280 - "The traditional education that is inspired by Hirsch has misunderstood and misappropriated the classical model, and the result is an education of great - often classical - books, but without the systematic, technical education in thinking that was always its foundation."

p. 282 - "Intelligence is how you think, not what you know."

p. 283 - "Intelligence researcher James Flynn, who sees that our view of intelligence and education revolves not around 'a cluster of interrelated concepts that collectively create a method of 'analysis' but around a 'knowledge trap' in which concepts 'get lost in the sheer volume of that knowledge' exemplifies the difficulty of pushing against the inertia of modern education."

p. 294 - "but the public understanding of science affects the wisdom of the crowd, ad it is the crowd that drives large scale progress. To erode that understanding is to erode confidence in the tool of the undeniable utility."

still upset, on p. 295 he says: "The second detrimental - maybe even catastrophic - effect of an education that doesn't prepare us well for the lives we lead is that it causes us to turn up the volume of politics all the way up to a screaming point without teaching us to notice that we still don't hear each other." His point is this is the impact of failing to teach thinking vs. knowledge which is the dominant way we roll.

[Elentarri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Craig Adams 'six secrets of intelligence' are deduction, induction, analogy, reality, evidence and meaning. Adams provides the definitions and examples of the basic concepts and shows how this knowledge is useful in spotting and dismissing illogical statements. The second half of the book deals with the modern education system and how it fails to teach the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric). There is some interesting stuff in this book, but the organisation is a bit erratic with too much repetition and not enough examples.

[Carlie Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short - this was great.

This book in essence is about philosophical thinking, demonstrated with the authors clear admiration of Aristotle in which he uses for almost every example.

I think this book is a great starting point for anybody interested in philosophy.

The most admirable part of this book for me is how easily accessible the author makes the ideas and concepts discussed, this book could be read by anybody without much difficulty.

The authors clear, simplified, yet engaging explanation of ideas made this book a relaxing yet rewarding read. Despite its simplicity I still found myself discussing its ideas with those around me which they also found rewarding. An example is that when we’re basing our arguments on different underlying assumptions, the agreement is futile.

From what I can see this is Craig Adams first published work and all I can say is good work, keep going. I will be on the lookout for what he does next.

[ilovereading · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always was starting to read this book, but i never found it that interesting to finish it all in that period.
But now, after having philosophy at school, I really found this book so interesting and so helpful in everyday situations.
It opened my mind, my thinking in a way that i never thought of.
So definetly this book is for people that wants more to be able to HEAR what others have to say to them, to truly understand their words and to let others understand them and why they think that their argument is right one.

[Ahmet Tekik · Rating 1 out of 5]

I told my partner, who got me this book, to never buy me a book again.

As for the book, I still don't know what the six secrets are. That's all I have to say.

[Jim Lavis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the challenge or argument in this book is sound, but the author’s solution is narrow and poorly defined. I believe he could have captured his thoughts in a lot fewer pages and simplified his thoughts through logical examples, but that wasn’t his approach.

Here’s a short outline of his views:

He claims that too much of teaching is focused on memorizing facts or historical events and expanding a broader vocabulary to support a convincing argument, and his solution is to study philosophy to help us think and expand our scope of knowledge and different points of view.

The author states: “Philosophy, when it’s at its educational best, doesn’t stuff our heads with knowledge: it shows us new and different ways of thinking. When it comes to arguing about who’s right, who’s wrong, what the truth is or isn’t, and what it really takes to ‘prove’ that you’re right, the simplest ideas are the best ones. If you ask the right questions, you don’t have to absorb whole sections of the library to learn how to think differently – and philosophy teaches us to ask just three basic questions: what’s real?, what do you mean? and what counts as evidence?”

“Ultimately, we are all, first and foremost, individuals with the power to make up our own minds and decide for ourselves. But if we can’t clearly see the structure of an argument or a theory, if we don’t notice the depth of the analogies, comparisons and examples that we’re offered, or if the alarm bells don’t go off when we hear the words ‘proof’, ‘evidence’ or ‘truth’ then how easily can we decide for ourselves?”

In both examples, I agree with his thinking, but I don’t understand or see a clear process to accomplish his claims. His thesis is too general in scope.

[Bec · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great book. Would recommend if you want to improve your mind, thinking skills and your overall perception of the world/other people. The six secrets were identified and explained brilliantly. The parts on the education system and how to improve it were not originally my thing but the author still made interesting points to keep me engaged. A key point that stuck on this particular section was our education system’s bias towards stories and eloquent writing over how to argue and identify manipulation. Schools recommend books for kids to read and only 2 out of 60 are non-fiction as they have an emphasis on epic stories and pretty words. While the author doesn’t undermine the importance of literature, he emphasizes the lack of education on scientific process and thought techniques that impact our lives more so than using ‘verdant instead of green’. Some great points to stew on and many thought provoking sections.

[Christian Wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate what the author tries to do here. An attempt at both explaining strategies to improve your thinking with a short treatise on the downsides of our educational systems still mimicking industrial revolution norms. However, the book tries to accomplish too much without much substance.

I’d skip this book and go towards something on metacognition, mental models, or cognitive psychology.

[Andreia Morar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The real rating would be 3.5 stars. A little bit chaotic in terms of how it's structured and also in terms of repetion. But for some people repetition is key.
Other than that, really great ideas.
And my favourite quote from the book is
"Thinking in a sense, is arguing with yourself"

[Anthony Stephenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, but broad and over generalised

[Ambrosia · Rating 2 out of 5]

unnecessarily complicated, though there were gems hidden in the mess

[Eloise Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opener - god help my boyfriend in all future arguments <3