Ashkenazy Jews, Intelligence, Evolution

Great Debates
1

There was a thread about this last year, but i feel it didn’t really go anywhere and i would like to start another. Primarily i would like to discuss my theories on the mechanisms involved in creating the evolutionary pressure, the implications for the study of evolution in other fields, and also the ramifications of the possibility that certain groups may be smarter than others and how, as a society, we should handle these and similar issues.

First, some links:

Second, I don’t want to hear from people about how all of this is some sort of illusion. Statistics such as 22% of Nobel laureates in the world (37% in the US) are Jews, while only 0.25% of the world population (2% of the US) are Jewish surely paint a striking picture and cannot be explained by “a culture of education.” 20-fold over-representation (i’ll use the US statistic since we’re all economically well-off here) cannot be explained by education. If you’re squemish about the topic, please do no participate. Anyway, even if they’re smart because of their culture, how does that alleviate the fact that they end being smarter than others? Would it really make the crucial difference if it was heredity involved? But anyway, I do not want this thread to be about that, but about the following:
The researchers in the above articles postulated the evolutionary mechanism to be primarily a sort of social darwinism where wealthier bankers had more kids. This is in line with the simplest understanding of the way evolution works… aka survival of the fittest/who can breed more. However, evolution can work in many more ways than that. An equally (or maybe more so) important mechanism in this case, I believe, is the powerful selective pressure that is created by immigration.

We all know how much smarter immigrants are than Americans. (Again, let’s not argue here, because they definately are.) Whether they come from China, India, or Russia, they’re all very smart. People have continued to postulate that this has all something to do with culture, but I think the real reason is much simpler. Immigration simply acts as a powerful filter that selects for intelligence. In order to immigrate, you need money and resources.

Now it’s obvious that simply having money doesn’t correlate excellently with intelligence, but that is because money is often possessed due to historical roots of aristocracy, class, and power. Yet, of course, the people in this position would not generally wish to emigrate. Even if it might be a bit better for them to leave, they’re certainly not as willing as the unentrenched. The people who do emmigrate are usually those who made their money recently and through meritocratic means, and who for the first time have the opportunity to get the hell out of the hellhole of their parents and grandparents. I think that this is an excellent explanation for the phenomenon of immigrants being so darn smart, and tons better than talking bs about their culture. (I mean the hypothesis that it is their culture may be valid, but I do not believe the evidence is there. And again, why are non-hereditary distinctions so much less offensive than hereditary?) Of course the above argument also implies that making new money correlates with intelligence, and that observed intelligence correlates with hereditary characteristics. We can argue about this to a limited extent, but like I said in another thread, we’re not smarter than chimps because we have better schools! And we didn’t evolve intelligence if it didn’t make us more successful! I belive people who refuse to acknowledge these basic principles are doing so because of the wider implications these ideas may have. Face it, of course genes greatly affect intelligence, and of course it helps to be smart when pursuing success. And of course, there are many other factors as well (which tend to add up to greatly affect an individual’s prospects, but which get averaged out more when you look at larger sample sizes), so please don’t state the obvious.

Jews, of course, if anything, can be defined synonymously with immigration. They first emmigrated from the Roman empire (as merchants, it is believed, who can also be expected to be smart). They then kept getting shoved around Europe throughout the Middle Ages. As one state would begin to wage a war of persecution, the more able and the more fore-knowing of the Jews would emmigrate. Hell, the first emmigration that the Jews experienced was called Exodus, for crying out loud!

Immigration, I thus believe, is a better source of evolutionary pressure than social darwinism (although, just because i am using that word of poor connotation, i do not believe that the researchers’ hypothesis plays no contribution).
Now, let us broach the wider implications of the prospect of Ashkenazy Jews being more intelligent than other groups.

First, we must ask whether one group being smarter than another is inherently unfair. Personally, I do not think so. What is unfair is that one individual may be smarter than another, but the fact that trends among individuals may correlate with some other characteristic has no actual signifance. Half the people in the world are above average, half below. What does it matter, fundamentally, if the smarter half is also taller (or share a common ancestry or are differently colored)? Ideally, there is no difference, because people are individuals.

Second, we must ask whether, hypothetically assuming that the truth of the matter was that some groups were smarter/better than others, we may ever acknowledge these facts or try to forever deny them. I ask this as a serious question. My answer to it is that it depends at what level of development society is and how capable it is of thinking clearly. Currently, i think society can hardly think clearly about many issues. Regarding race, however, the efforts of the liberal movement have prooved much more successful (compared to those of biologists teaching evolution, for example) such that perhaps as a culture we might indeed be prepared to treat people as individuals and not dwell too much on correlations. An “ideal” society, surely, would benefit far more from truth than lies.

Indeed, denial is not without sideeffects. If you do deny some elements of the truth, there will always be those who see through the bullshit. However, these people then start assuming that they’ve been lied to about a great many other things and feel justified in holding truly wrong and harmful beliefs. For example, not recognizing a biological (or some other rational) basis for the success of Ashkenazy Jews has led many people to believe that their undeniable striking affluence is due to something else, which they take to be conspiracy or malfeasence. The Nazis killed off the Jews because they thought that the only way they could’ve gotten so rich was because they had gained their wealth through lies and crookedness. Their violent reaction is much more understandable in this light, as I’d be very angry if someone’s been waging a horrid conspiracy against me as well. (Of course the main mechanism involved was the tendency of misfortuned people to scapegoat… just look at what the Middle East thinks of America. Yet real factors play into things as well… we are, after all, assholes.)
P.S. I repeat. The previous thread was bogged down about the debate whether Jews really are more intelligent, but I would REALLY much rather like to discuss the other issues and implications. Even if you don’t believe that this is true, then mention your view breifly before talking about the more interesting issues of evolutionary mechanisms and social implications. Talking about these topics does not require you to believe the Jews-intelligence connection. Please, please, PLEASE, we will NOT have an interesting discussion if people keep making posts about how they think that Jews aren’t smarter. Primarily, because the two sides of such a debate will not find the evidence to convince the other. So PLEASE!!!

P.P.S. regarding whether intelligence means success or whether intelligence is clearly hereditary: think about my point regarding individuals/groups carefully. If you take an individual, what will matter much more toward his success is if this guy is lazy, if he has good people skills, if he is physically attractive (quite important), if he is popular. (Actually, popularity/beauty is a two-edged sword. It helps enormously later in life, but in youth it distracts you from school. Socially-awkward nerds are often smart because they are socially-awkward and don’t have anything better to do than homework and no reward besides academic/financial success.) It is true that intelligence gets displaced by these factors when looking at individuals. However, these things tend to get averaged out more when looking at groups and intelligence DOES become a prime factor. There could be other factors such as cultural bias favoring education… but I simply do not see evidence of that. If immigrants think highly of schooling, it is because in their crappy country that was the only way of getting ahead. Most importantly, it is the reason they (the parents) themselves got ahead, in combinbation with their natural talents, and were able to emigrate. So don’t take hard work among immigrants to be indicative of their native culture. Moreover, I do not believe hard work is all that hereditary (laziness and astiduousness rather being energy-saving adjustments to the demands of the environment). I don’t think jewish culture, being largely european, itself emphasizes education all that much more than “ours”.

Lastly, the researchers in the articles framed the argument from an entirely different point of view than trying to explain off the supposed phenonmenon of Ashkenazy Jew intelligence. That is, they took it from the angle of genetic correlations that point toward an evolutionary pressure that, judging from the genes involved, has to do with nerves (although that doesn’t directly mean intelligence). If hereditary traits other than intelligence are to be explored, I propose that Jews might also have evolved poorer social skills (or more likely other social-status factors, like speech impediments… many jews cannot roll R’s because of a membrane under the tongue) which would boost their intelligence as well (because, like i mentioned above, boredom/loneliness will give them more reason to study and work to hard to pursue an affluent life). However, it is also reasonable to say that intelligence and poor social skills go hand-in-hand for physiological reasons, mainly that there’s only so much room in the brain (social skill is an “intelligence” as well, so in the above discussion I was referring to the more traditional definition). It may also be related in principle to autism (or rather Asperger’s).

2

There are simply too many unsupported assumptions here. I’d say the “culture of education” you rather casually dismiss is a critical element. Smart people pop up all over the place, but the environment largely determines if they get the opportunity to succeed or squander their gifts in mediocrity.

And I’m ethnically an Ashkenazi Jew, though I tend to think of myself as a Canadian.

3

So then those immigrants that are closer to the US and don’t need much money and resources are less intelligent?

And since when have Jews been a race?

4

Your caveats, requests, and admonitions aside, I don’t think this will go well. But good luck.

My take is that there is some group that is, on average, taller, one fatter, one with the lighest skin, one faster, one stronger than other groups. Some of those differences will be significant, some wont. And we can only guess as to the reasons. Your immigration idea some to make sense to me. And persecution. If you go through that enough you’ll either wind up extinct or smarter.

Now, the question is twofold. One, are Ashkenazi Jews smarter? Maybe, it seems like their probably in the running for the top slot at the very least. The second question is, is wining the Noble Prize an accurate or fair measure of intelligence. If all groups are aware of it, value it as much, and compete for it as much, I’d probably say yes.

But a question comes to me, who is the second smartest, or third? It seems that if you can’t easily to point to these contenders, then the Noble yardstick may be wanting

5

And you have to equate winning the prize with intelligence, and we have to assume that everybody has an equal chance of winning - the nominators and judges must be unbiased and equally aware of all possible laureates. In other words, I doubt it can be used as a reliable metric.

I’m sure this won’t go far, but I guess we may as well get the ball rolling.

Can you give some kind of a cite that it can’t be an illusion? You’re asserting it’s impossible, but I don’t know why it is.

Moving beyond that issue, since you swear you don’t want to talk about it, I’d say that the first thing we have to do is define intelligence. There are many different kinds of smarts; intelligence is not synonymous with ‘achievement’ or ‘the capacity to lead,’ for example.

6

It usually requires considerable resource and the plane ticket is a small cost. However, yes, the immigrational filter for Mexicans selects for not as much for intelligence (since it doesn’t take them affluence to get here) but other characteristics such as determination and altruism/loyalty/love toward the family (although it’s unclear how much these will be passed to the children).

Jews, in general, are not. But the Ashkenazy Jews in question have a common heritage and are genetically distinct. The discussion is about this group in particular.
The Nobel prize is not a highly accurate measure. If there was a 50% overrepresentation or maybe even three-fold, you could still argue that’s within the natural variability of the metric. 2000% overrepresentation, however, is clearly indicative of something. And I believe the Nobel isn’t the only line of observation that Jews may be unusually smart. However, it is one of the most pronounced. Of course, I must mention that statistics teaches that slight differences between two distributions become greatly exaggerated at the extremes (the reason why the Nobel is so striking). What the Nobel figure shows is that at the highest levels, Jews clearly have a large advantage. However, this is explainable by a much more modest difference at the mean (10-15% higher average IQ seems reasonable to produce the 2000% outlier measurement). Ok, how about this. We cannot just keep this discussion silent, so the next person to reply on this vein should please (please!) start a new thread and quote the relevant parts of this one. Sorry about my laziness, or my sheepishness about outright starting an argument on this topic. I cannot say that I am confident I will be able to argue this point effectively and diplomatically enough (but my standards for “effectively” are high). I’d rather we talked about evolution (since i believe that this immigration-selection should be a cornerstone of evolutionary thought and it has not been properly discussed yet) and social implications (which apply for any differences that groups may have between each other).

7

I know you don’t post a lot, but you have to realize that people here are not going take these comments on faith.

If someone wants to, they can go ahead and do it, but it won’t be me. I’m very tired, I’m not that interested in that subject right now, and I don’t really see the point - it seems clear you don’t want to back up those comments or you would already have done so.

8

First, I’m a biologist and an Ashkenazi. I’ve seen the statistics, and I am far from convinced that Ashkenazim are more intelligent.

First, as others have mentioned, the Nobel prizes are not good yardsticks of anything. First, they have traditionally been quite America/Eurocentric. The Peace Prize and the Literature Prize are really the only ones that regularly go to others, but still the majority of these ones go to Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Australians, South Africans, etc. The prizes awarded in economics and in the sciences have almost exclusively gone to Europeans.

The bigger points arise from the definition of intelligence. Do we have a precise definition for it? (no) Are we talking about innate inborn intelligence? What components of intelligence are inborn? How much intelligence is actually inborn? We don’t have reasonable answers. Worse yet, we don’t even have reasonable tests and metrics in order to ask the questions correctly.

What we do know is that much of intelligence, however you want to define it, centers around upbringing. And the Ashkenazi culture that you blithely wave away would be a model of how to nurture intelligence – early reading, speaking, multilingualism, breadth of experience, debate encouraged, etc. It is by far the most compelling, logical, and scientifically sound explanation. Dismissing it in the first few lines of your OP seems out of hand, IMHO.

In the end, we end up in the same evolution/genetics debate that we have been through so many times with race and athletics and intelligence. There is no such thing as a race, even human populations have diffuse borders so that there is constant genetic flow into and out of these populations, there is no such thing as private alleles, etc. Since it is clear that we are not talking about monogenic traits (which would be quite noticeable and exciting), what you eventually get down to is haplotype frequency and so forth, and are forced to rejigger the question – Is there a bigger percentage of highly intelligent/fast running people in population A versus population B?

These questions are incredibly difficult to answer (and again, to even ask) scientifically. To give an answer from something I am familiar with (transgenic mice), it takes around 2 standard deviations of phenotype difference in order to be able to genetically map a trait. And we are talking about monogenic traits in mouse strains with long and controlled pedigrees and carefully selected matings. We are not in the ballpark of answering this for polygenic traits with variable penetrance, with lots of genetic background, etc. etc. The question, simply, cannot be answered with current technology although the genetic medicine community is thinking about ways to do it in the future (in disease susceptibility loci). I am a part of that community and I have my ideas. We’ll see…

Along the same lines, the evolution question, quite simply, is IMHO answered “no.” Although I suppose it is possible that you have low levels of selection across the genome on hundreds of susceptibility loci, I believe these would vanish into background noise or require a long, long time to get selected. I don’t think in the <100 generations of the existence of the Ashkenazim, you could have had such an evolutionary selection. In fact, I’d be surprised if there was any evolution at all in the Ashkenazim except by genetic drift. Which is another explanation – like what is hypothesized with Tay Sachs and some other traits. Again, it is possible, but in that case, we are just talking about sheer chance.

IMHO, in conclusion, as an Ashkenazi with a PhD in genetics, I’d put it entirely on culture.

9

This is a good point. We’d also have to be sure that there was no bias in who they give it to, race-, nationality-, religious-, and political-wise.

10

Interesting…why would you instantly look to Mexico? You are aware that we have neighbours to the North? Are they less intelligent too?

“In general”, what does that mean? Are you saying that there are different races of Jews? Or that the Ashkenazy Jews are different from other Europeans in the same region? That if a person has X, Y and Z, he must be an Ashkenazy? Could you perhaps clarify what genetic distinction you’re referring to?

11

Y’know, this reads to me as: don’t tell me anything that will contradict my preconceived notion that there just has to be a genetic explanation.

Sorry. The Nobel selection group has any number of (quite innocent) biases, starting from the perspective that in the first half century, or so, of their existence they were very nearly oblivious to people and groups outside Europe and North America except when the occasional British (or, more rarely French) “colonial” came to their attention. Then you need to demonstrate that a “culture of education” (in which going into the various disciplines of science at the post-graduate level was a realistic goal for a community that faced various barriers of prejudice that reduced other options) could not possibly produce the results we see.

Simply saying that the statistics cannot support the conclusion is mere hand-waving unless you can demonstrate why your interpretation of the statistics requires acceptance by everyone else.

12

Actually, I would give him a pass on this objection. The Ashkenazim are a clearly defined group with very high endogamy, particularly up through the early 1950s (so that if a genetic component to their intelligence were to be found, they would have had fewer than two generations to have it diffused).

I think we’re safe challenging the claims of the nurture vs nature discussion without getting sidetracked into a discussion of the “racial” component of Jewishness.
(It would, however, be interesting to discover how many Nobel recipients he has lumped in as Ashkenazim who might actually be Sepharim or Mizrahim, weakening his argument. :wink: )

13

Far be it for me to hijack a thread…however, part of the OP’s point is that not only are Ashkenazi Jews, somehow different that other humans, but they’re different genetically that other jews as well, that they are a race unto themselves.

Maybe I’m reading more into it than the OP means, but if my reading is correct, that’s a pretty big claim to make…I don’t know how you can make that claim without being able to define genetically what makes a Jew, a Jew, and then define what separates genetically the Ashkenazi from every other Jew or person on the planet.

Strong endogamy is one thing, but that doesn’t equate to them evolving into a separate ‘race’.

14

There could also be something to a “hierarchy of needs” that makes even the educated from non-European countries do less theoretical research and more practical, since their countrymen are still in need of basic services, stability, etc. Whereas Europeans are more free to focus on stuff that is more likely to gain a Nobel Prize.

I say this even though there are plenty of counter-examples to the classic “hierarchy of needs” list.

15

A culture of education, perhaps, would be a pretty obvious place to start. You may deny it exists, but the fact is it does exist, or at least you’ve done nothing to establish otherwise.

People from the city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, are overrepresented among Major League Baseball players by a factor of at least 2000%, and likely higher. Do those people carry a genetic marker for being able to hit baseballs with bats?

16

No, but they appear to be funnier. They are disproportionally represented on SNL.

17

Wait a minute. Do you mean that Askhenazi Jews are less genetically distinct than Sephardic Jews??? It’s quite clear by looking at the appearance of a random group of Askhenazis that there has been quite a lot of mixing with local populations. Until you show me that there was a lot of blond, blue-eyed people living originally in Palestine, I’m not going to believe Askhenazi are anymore “pure-breed” than Sephardic Jews.

18

I don’t see where you get that from the OP’s statement.
Anyway, I bet there are plenty of intelligent people being born in Africa all the time, but without access to schools (or for that matter, societies free of pointless ethnic violence and civil strife) their talents go to waste.

19

Because he seems to say that Askhenazis are more of a distinct race than Jews in general. According to him, Jews aren’t a race, but Ashkenazis somehow more so. That seems to imply that Ashkenazis have been more inbred than other Jews, resulting in them either preserving originally distinct genetical or racial attributes or creating some sort of new genetical/racial “breed”.

20

But if that was true, why are you asking if it makes them less distinct than Sephardim? Wouldn’t it make them more distinct? As for the blond, blue-eyed stuff, that might just be response to the environment the Ashkenazim found themselves in.

And actually, we’re arguing the finer points of a faulty premise.