I recently bumped into a friend in the city who had just returned from visiting a medical specialist. After discussing what he had been told by the doctor, he said that he would be seeking another opinion because he suspected the specialist was a Jew. He went on to lament that so many of the specialists in that field were also Jews and that there were not too many Arabs or Muslims — hinting, of course, at some sort of conspiracy. Although I wasn’t impressed that he would be seeking a second opinion based purely on some imported ethno-religious hangups rather than out of prudence alone, I suggested, somewhat tongue in cheek, that maybe it was because Jews were just very intelligent and so they excelled in these sorts of professions.
There is, however, a kernel of truth to that. Indeed, as these interesting statistics on the intellectual excellence of Ashkenazi Jews suggest:
Ashkenazim have earned 27% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans, 25% of ACM Turing Awards, and 26% of the Fields Medals. They account for more than half the world chess champions. Ashkenazic Jews, 2 percent of the US population, make up 30% of elite-college faculty, 30% of Supreme Court law clerks, and 27% of Ivy Leaguers.
I suspect that Jews are likewise disproportionately well represented in other professions favouring high intelligence. To give just one example from my own field, the father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl is a man named Judea Pearl, a giant in artificial intelligence research (he popularised Bayesian networks). Pick the leaders in any field favouring high intelligence, and Jews will almost certainly be amongst them in significant numbers. Indeed, so prolific are Jews in some fields, that it is almost understandable that some people might assume a conspiracy of sorts.
This, of course, brings up the real Jewish question: why are Jews so smart?
One answer may lie in genetics and particularly a form of positive eugenics that some researchers believe has been taking place in European Jewish communities for several hundred years. It is argued that the social conditions faced by Jews in medieval Europe selected for high intelligence. On this point, there is an interesting research paper here [pdf] that laid a lot of the groundwork for the ongoing discussion of Jewish achievement and what has caused it. National Geographic provide a useful summary of the research.
The argument is essentially that discrimination and persecution forced Jews into certain professions in which high IQ happened to favour economic success — such as banking and finance — and that this in turn then led to increased reproductive success (large families). In simple terms, the smart Jews succeeded economically and could therefore afford to have more children; whereas those who were not smart enough to succeed in the few professions available to them at the time could afford to have fewer children. If smart people are having more children, and less smart people are having less children, then it’s fairly obvious what the effect is when it is multiplied over many generations: you end up with a smarter population.
There are, of course, other theories. Charles Murray, writing in Commentary recently, discusses two additional possibilities:
Two potential explanations for a Jewish gene pool favoring high intelligence are so obvious that many people assume they must be true: winnowing by persecution (only the smartest Jews either survived or remained Jews) and marrying for brains (scholars and children of scholars were socially desirable spouses). I too think that both of these must have played some role, but how much of a role is open to question.
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There are two assumptions (both of which maybe false) that you are making, the first is that intelligence is a heritable trait.
The second is that intelligence can be measured and that academic achievement is a indicator of intelligence, rather than it is an indicator of hard work, resources or any other trait.
Jewish people maybe more academically inclined because of a long-standing cultural tradition of valuing scholarship, rather than because they are genetically more gifted with “intelligence”.
There is also the assumption that it was intelligence that allowed one to successful at banking and finance in the middle ages (when it was referred to as money lending). The restriction for this profession was religious rather than academic. Christians were not allowed to lend money with usury, but Jewish law allowed Jews to do so to gentiles.
If income has ever been correlated with children, it has been in the reverse direction to what you purpose, i.e. that poorer, less educated people have more not fewer children
One of the peculiarities of human beings is that it is our humanity that stops up reproducing like animals using purely natural selection rules. That is why humans, unlike other mammals carry many more genetic diseases over generations.
[...] tries to explain the phenomenal progress of Jews. Powered by Gregarious [...]
Well, according to the study ‘IQ and the Wealth of Nations’ authored by Dr. Richard Lynn and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen, assigns Israel an average IQ of 94, and that is chock full of Ashkhenazi’s with this seemingly superior intelligence.
http://www.isteve.com/IQ_Table.htm
that table is a HREEC complaint all by itself
The Arabs don’t score very well on that chart, Eu. Qatar averages 78, Egypt averages 83, Iraq averages 87, and Lebanon scores 86. Of course, it could be worse. Apparently, the average IQ is 62 in Ghana.
T Cell, it’s not as simple as saying intelligence is not heritable and it’s therefore just the environment and nature that determines if a man is intelligent or not. It’s probably a combination of both nature and nurture.
There have also been studies comparing IQs of adopted children with their birth parents and adoptive parents, revealing that their IQs are more closely aligned to those of their genetic parents rather than the people who raised them. Likewise, comparing adopted children with their adopted siblings, there are differences between them even though they have been raised in the same household and enjoyed the same benefits (for the most part).
As for whether intelligence is “genetic” then again it may be more complicated than that. For example, there have been studies that have established a positive correlation between gray matter volume in the cortex of the brain and high scores on IQ tests. And Gray matter volume is heritable.
Amir, where did you get those stats? From your friendly local White Supremacist site? Apart from the obvious nonsense of thinking that there is any real world ‘ranking’ of countries by IQ (who did it? when did they do it? were their results replicated? which tests did they use? why don’t any reputable journals seem to know about this?), every Ghanain I’ve met has been sharp and smart. Small sample, yup (maybe a couple of hundred people) but other travellers I’ve met agree. Ghanians are anecdotally know for their intelligence.
And OP, your friend isn’t displaying “some imported ethno-religious hang-ups”, he’s displaying racism. Pure and simple and disgusting. Drop him.
A problem with cross-cultural psychology is the implementation in non-western countries of psych tests based upon the the understandings of (and developed in) the west. There is also the issue of ‘the’ IQ vs. multiple types of intelligence. Allahu ‘Alam.
This may be true now but it wasn’t always the case. In the affluent homes of the period, people could afford to marry earlier and have more children as a result; whereas in the less affluent households, youths were focused on trying to find enough money for the family to survive and so they postponed marriage or didn’t marry at all. If they postponed it, then naturally, they tended to have less children.
You’d better tell your friend that the tests for whatever he has and the treatment for it were almost certainly also heavily-affected by Jewish physicians and scientists and that, given his views, he might want to wait for a proper muslim or Arab or muslim and arab method of diagnosis and treatment.
Other reseachers have found that Chinese people have exceptionally high abilities. One explanation there is that the value placed on scholarship by Chinese culture encouraged a similar eugenic selection process; another is that the sheer effect of learning and using mandarin has a beneficial effect on peoples’ intelligence.
The british pychologist Liam Hudson did a study of psychology students at Cambridge University. He found that- out of a very skewed sample- the only thing high IQ correlated with was the belief that IQ tests were reliable measures of intelligence.
T-Cell makes a more logical argument:
Jewish people maybe more academically inclined because of a long-standing cultural tradition of valuing scholarship, rather than because they are genetically more gifted with “intelligence”.
And Muslims should know this from their own history, how well the Islamic nation excelled in the sciences at a time when there was such a high value for scholarship within the Islamic world.
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
For a community to maintain its gene pool as regards intelligence doesn’t require conscious eugenics; a possible reason why Jews do so well is that the Jewish communities in Europe were overwhelmingly literate and that scholars, such as rabbis, were not celibate unlike among their neighbouring Christians. It was considered a good match for a girl to marry a rabbi; Catholic intellectual life was almost entirely conducted among celibate priests and monastics, so they did not pass whatever genes they had down to the next generation. Even in the Protestant world, where priests married, a marriage to a priest wasn’t seen as advantageous. Generally speaking, Jews in Europe were literate (and despite their persecution, had higher standards of living than others in the parts of Europe where they lived).
As for that table, obviously poorer countries with poorer education systems score lower. It just goes to show that IQ doesn’t measure innate, i.e. genetic, intelligence.
I remember reading the research when it was first published and the point was made that African-Americans score far higher than Africans even though they are obviously racially very similar. Therefore, it would be wrong to draw any racial conclusions from the material. Indeed, one of the reasons, aside from the better education system and so on, for the disparity within the racial groups is nutrition and the fact that poor nutrition — of which poverty is obviously a major cause — has a depressive effect on IQ.
Shalom Amir,
There is a great deal of conflicting evidence about intellect and genes or environment, as well as intellect and achievement.
there are studies that show firstborns are the most intelligent of the children, and that self discipline by the age of 5 correlates better with achievement as an adult better than IQ.
Yes, the jewry is still out on whether the principle determinant of intelligence is genes or environment.
However, the fact remains that intellectual output of the Jews is completely disproportionate to their relatively small numbers. Perhaps, it’s simply a culture of learning, or perhaps it’s genetics, or perhaps, as I suspect, it’s a combination of many factors; but regardless it’s interesting and worth investigating (and understanding).
Now, if intelligence isn’t entirely innate, then what about religiousness?
There’s evidence that being religious is beneficial to the individuals concerned from a social point of view, which would mean that a hypothetical “religious gene” would become widely spread and obviously the frequent religious injunction to have a lot of children would also spread it too. This has nothing to do with the actual truth or falsehood of any religion, of course.
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” More evidence for this was given by a survey of people’s assessment of the probability of various events taking place. It was found that “normal” people thought bad things less likely to happen and good things more likely to happen than is actually the case. Clinically depressed people got the likelihood right however. As one of the people conducting the survey put it: psychologically, sanity is being in a completely unjustified state of optimism.
Why come up with a Darwinian explanation to the question? Natural selection can’t explain everything away… Darwin’s theories were never more than paradigms.
Jews are more ambitious than most other ethnicities. And they are also bookworms. Those two factors explain a lot. But why not take a more holistic approach? Intelligence is not measurable in Nobel prizes and so on. Wisdom is worth immensely more than cleverness.
So what effect do you think inbreeding has on IQ? We know there are some groups here that prefer to marry within their own families (cousins) or from their little villages back home.
Something can’t be a paradigm- I assume you are using Kuhn’s meaning, as any other is meaningless here- unless it’s something more in the first place, Zanjabil. It has to be a convincing explanation of a phenomenon incorporating all of the known elements that require exaplanation. Any “people of the book” are bookworms, by definition and in what way are jews “more ambitious” than others? Wisdom, whatever that is, may be “worth immensely more than cleverness”; however, I think that cleverness is probably a prerequisite for it.
Theodore: in-breeding may sometimes have a beneficial effect. Charles Darwin is an example, in fact; among others his family produced the Wedgwoods, the great composer Vaughan Williams, the Keyneses and a variety of other major contributors to British public life. They all tended to marry cousins too. On the other hand, they also suffered from depression much more often than others.
Maybe once Muslims stop worrying why the Jews are so smart they can work on making themselves smart
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