Diabetes and obesity can gave genetic components, sure. But they also are correlated strongly with being underpriviledged. The First Nations in Canada have the unfortunate honour of being the single most underpriviledged group in our country.
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc, etc, Galileo, etc, etc, Newton, etc, etc, Darwin, ete, all missed getting a Nobel prize. Damn, I guess that means that the rest of us are dumb.
This thread is pretty lame.
20 years from now the the Chinese are going to conduct studies about how they had similar stats to make them feel better about themselves in the face of their lazy Americanized progeny.
No one type of people is smarter than the next. Why isn’t this racism is my question?
No offense, but “this hypothesis makes me uncomfortable so it can’t possibly be true” is not a very powerful argument.
I would agree that the various ethods used, thus far, to measure intelligence have suffered all kinds of cultural bias. I would assert that g is an imaginary nexus that probably does not represent a legitimate, meaningful data point. On the other hand, to the extent that people believe that they can ascertain a cross-culturally derived value of g, some groups will, in aggregate, test higher and some groups lower on that score.
(I will note, as I have noted previously in this thread, that the researchers are not making any claims for IQ or g, so I am not sure that that is a genuine issue, in any event.)
As for a charge of “racism,” again, the researchers are not making a claim for any group that could be remotely considered a “race.” They are examining one very specific population that has very good markers for establishing the who is or who is not a member.
I am not yet persuaded by their claims or their research, but blanket statements about intelligence across all peoples or charges of racism seem to miss the point of the research.
I don’t think it’s completely due to social background. Saying IQ is wholly social is asburd. Certainly, I’ve encountered individuals with mental retardation who come from good families. I went to high school with a kid who probably had an IQ in the low 60s but had a nice family and a brother in the FBI.
You’ve read the studies you referenced?
If so, would it be possible to infer that 20% of IQ scores are social?
If the scale is normalized at 100, might that mean that the best possible outcome for someone with an “average” IQ potential of 100 would have an IQ of 120 if she were raised in an environment most favorable to development of high IQ?
Interesting, but scary stuff.
I know my IQ changed dramatically as I grew up. I test at 150 in elementary school, but by early high school I was down to 130. I also know that I became much less academically oriented between being a kid and being grown. When I was a little kid I used to just read the World Book set my mom had. For fun. All day.
The Globe and Mail also reported on this, but in the wider context of genetic differences between populations. Please see here .
While I understand the concern that these sorts of investigations may fuel racism, I think it is naive to think that populations that were ‘incubated’ in different environments would not have been impacted by Darwinian type selection. To quote from this same cite on a slightly less loaded topic:
*"… all but six of the 500 fastest times for the 100-metre dash have come from sprinters of West African descent, which includes most U.S. blacks. Kenyans, meanwhile, dominate world records in long-distance races.
According to the report, Swedish physiologists trying to penetrate the “Kenyan mystique” compared runners from Africa and Scandinavia on treadmill times, lung capacity, heart rates and body weights. Limb measurements indicated that the Kenyans carried 400 grams less flesh on each calf. The report referred to their “birdlike legs,” explaining how Kenyan runners squeeze more power from their oxygen intake, since “they need less energy to swing their limbs.”
Research on West Africa’s sprinters, meanwhile, revealed a body type of heavier “fast-twitch” muscles, versus the lighter “slow-twitch” muscles of endurance runners, as well as denser bones, narrower hips, thicker thighs, longer legs and lighter calves. Efforts are now under way to decode the genetics behind all these traits."
*
We need to acknowledge that people’s genetic heritage can put them at an advantage or disadvantage in certain pursuits, and not be ostriches about this because political correctness would have it otherwise.
OTOH, genetics is not everything. I can’t find a link for this but remember reading sometime in the last 2 weeks about people being able to change the percentage of fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers by working out under the right conditions. I believe Lance Armstrong was mentioned in there as an example. With respect to intellect, I would like to quote Thomas Edison: " Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." So, as at least one poster have already mentioned, intelligence grows with effort put into learning.
You are exactly right, Finagle. It is either a fact that a specific group is “smarter” than the population or it isn’t. I’m not a geneticist (or a Jew) but I’d be shocked if all populations were equally “smart”.
The brain, like any other part of the body can be strong or weak. Different groups have developed better lung capacities (Sherpas), protection from sun (Africans), size (Icelanders), specific muscle groups (west African runners vs east African runners). There are also groups that suffer certain diseases at a higher rate. Right now, they are trying to approve a drug specifically for African-Americans. Why would the brain be the one thing that would be exempt from possible long-term hereditary improvement?
I do think, though, that by far the greater factor is culture. It might be stetreotyping, but many jews I’ve known value education and mental achievement more than anything else. So even if we were all equally “smart” I would expect that group to outperform the rest. Still Kid Charlemagne’s factoid: “Jews are less than 1% of the population but have 20% of Nobel Prizes.” is amazing.
As to the hereditability of IQ
No, Mr. Slant that doesn’t mean a 40% higher score; it means that 40% of the variation. Those environmental influences are myriad, not just family and school, but random epigenetic and other events influencing brain development.
Except that most Jews lived and still live in the develloped countries where the overwhelming majority of Nobel prize winners were concentrated. So, taking into account all of the world population isn’t a sound comparison.
By the same standart, a highly disproportionnate %age of the Nobel prize winners are also white people, for the same reason.
Just to be clear, that factoid was not originally posted by me. But assuming it is correct, it is amazing. As far as your point, I would bet that if you controlled for developed countries, it is still so. In other words, if you took as the larger population only those people of the developed world, the percentage of them that are jewish would be much smaller than the percent than the percentage of Jews that have won Nobel prizes.
FWIW re Jewish Nobel Prize winners.
I’d argue that it is more a cultural thing. Jews were historically spread out among cultures and thus engaged in the commerce of intellectual property.
But that is the question. Of course, culture/nurture is involved. The point raised by the article in The Economist that started this thread is that there may be a genetic factor. You might want to scan the posts to see what I mean. Everyone, I think, would agree that culture/nurture plays a large, if not the largest role.
I agree, and culture no doubt plays an important role. But here’s a question for you: What happens when you take a group of people that intermarries very little for a thousand years, and that group of people places a high value on intelligence and education? What if Jewish women prefer to marry and have kids with intelligent men? What if Jewish men prefer to marry and have kids with intelligent women? And what if Jewish parents prefer that their children marry someone who is smart?
In a population group with such a culture, over 50 generations, the frequency of alleles that boost intelligence will increase significantly, I suspect.
Even today if you surveyed people about what qualities they would value in a potential husband, wife, son-in-law, or daughter-in-law, I imagine that Jews would consistently mention intelligence near the top.
Oh I know the point. See my contribution in post 13.
Nobel Prize rates still don’t prove the factoid about average IQ to me. I still question it.
handsomeone: My position has been the minority one, that genetics most likely does play a role. Or, at least, it certainly can. See my previous posts in this thread. Or did I not understand your question?
DSeid: I agree. How Nobel Prizes are dispersed among the larger population does not “prove” anything. But it does strongly suggest that genetics may be playing a role.
You’re right. I wasn’t really trying to argue against your position, although re-reading my post it does seem that way.
Then, the comparison should be limited to this. Including the whole world population is disingeneous.
Yes, I noted it wasn’t your claim…
Are Jews Really Smarter?
Huh?
Actually, at least one of two other events must also have occurred or you will not change the frequency of alleles, at all. Either the group must have a practice that ensures that less desirable people never breed or there must be an active agency that ensures that the smartest people breed the most children.
Without one of those situations, we would not see a general increase in intelligence, but a stratification within the society with smart breeding with smart, average breeding with average, and slow breeding with slow. Common wisdom indicates in most societies the most beautiful are attracted to each other, yet we are not breeding a more beautiful society. Ugly and average people still find mates and continue to remain in the gene pool.
The authors of the original study made a claim (for which I have not yet found either external support or the methodology by which they have discovered that it occurred) that the second phenomenon occurred. (They are reported to have said that the smartest and most successful persons had the largest families.) On the other hand, in response to the first point, I would note that the Jewish community had a strong tradition encouraging marriage that looked askance at bachelors and spinsters and I have never seen any indication that there was an exception for the less than brilliant. (Allowing the mentally retarded to remain childless only removes one outlier population and does not really increase the intelligence of the general population.)
What percentage of jews didn’t get married?