He would instantly look to Mexico because there’s a very, very significant movement of Mexican-born people immigrating to America legally and illegally pretty much since the end of the US-Mexican War. Canadians don’t really have a socioeconomic reason to immigrate to the US–their lot in life is pretty much as good as ours–and thusly would only move here for reasons like family, relationships, specific job offers, politics, etc.
I meant “less genetical differences amongst Ashkenazis” not “less genetical differences between Ashkenazis and whatever other group”
The environment wouldn’t result in climate-related adaptive changes (fairer skin, etc… and I’m not sure eye color has anything to do with the environment) in so short a time.
[bolding mine]
The bolded line does not appear in the post by Holmes.
Do not insert extraneous material into a quote block from another poster. If you want to claim an error, do it outside the quote tags.
[ /Moderating ]
With that out of the way:
I will point out two separate issues:
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the Wiki article linked does not actually call the Jews a “race”;
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the use of the word “race” in connection to the Jews is anachronistic. When Linnaeus was categorizing every living thing he could find, he borrowed an earlier word for the subdivisions of humanity. That earlier word (“race” in English) expressed the notion of a people who descended from a common (often legendary) ancestor. There was no hint of genetic descent in the meaning, as the group could include adopted people, conquered people, and others. The Irish were known as the Milesian Race; other groups were also identified as races. The term was, if anything, a reference to “nations” (although not to the modern nation state), not to genetically linked people.
Sigh, the initial repliers were right… this thread hasn’t (and probably has zero chance of) going in the direction that I wished.
I’m getting pretty annoyed by the people who mindlessly pipe in “oh, well, the Nobel is really pro-American and the judges are biased.” The statistics I presented are for America only (those for the world show an 80-fold boost not 20, and I understand the reasons why the American figures are much more appropriate). Moreover, the judges cannot be so skewed as to favor Jews that much for no reason (20-fold!). That would be called one thing: a conspiracy. And like I said previously, a refusal to acknowledge a different capability has led many to that same immesurably damaging conclusion.
The poster who mentioned Santo Domingo in relation to overrepresentation makes an excellent point. Like I said previously, overrepresentation at the extreme ends of a distribution is explainable by much more modest differences at the mean. Thus, the Nobel statistic cannot be explained by saying there’s something funny going on with the Nobels themselves (no factor can be of a 20-fold influence besides cheating), but only by factors that displace the entire distribution of Ashkinazy intelligence much more modestly (ie by a realistic magnitude). This, of course, is corroborated by other lines of evidence that all point to this somewhat offset distribution.
Of course, this does not answer the question of what those factors are. However, it will be a big leap for many here to admit as much.
I asked previously what the true significance of a non-hereditary origin of this phenomenon would be. Do hereditary differences cause racism far more than cultural ones? I do realize that if differences are not hereditary it at least means that we could be all the same, if we tried. However, I think there is a bigger taboo associated with hereditary differences than might be reasonable.
Most importantly, whether these differences are hereditary or not, my question of how to deal with them does not lose an ounce of significance. Should we still not talk about them, to be in denial about them, or will, on balance, clear thinking serve us better? I know many of you will be of the arational persuasion that truth is always good, and may be of the impression that I am posing this question rhetorically. However, no, I fully concede that denial, despite its side-effects (see OP and the above regarding Nobel conspiracies), may be net-beneficial.
— I’d like the above to settle in a bit. To be the jumping-off point for replies. The above is as much more discussion-worthy as the below is provoking. —
Indeed, many have stated that they believe the differences are caused by a culture that values education. Firstly, we must recognize the fact that a group whose prized asset is intelligence will also value the cultivation of it more. From a microeconomics argument, they would receive more payout from each investment of effort. Therefore, the supply-demand curves (where effort is on the axis of price and benefit on that of the amount of goods) would shift. Also, like I said, immigration itself will select for assiduousness as much as intelligence, but that assiduousness is likely less genetically heritable. Moreover, I think it is not all that culturally heritable either. I think you will find the “culture of education” far more clearly present among the first/second-generation immigrant population than American Ashkinazy Jews at large (but it would be wonderful if someone could find some statistics of how the two match up). For shits and giggles, let us have an informal poll of the people on this forum if they honestly believe that they are here now primarily because their parents pushed them toward schooling and not because they found learning to not be all that difficult or tedious in itself. Let us see if the Jews predominantly choose the former. In the end, I think all Americans push their children to succeed educationally. Jews would have to be pushing themselves far and beyond that. Or what, do they just have some dark Jew parenting secret of how to do it so much more successfully?
This is a straw man, since no one has actually argued that claim.
This is mere assertion without support. You need to demonstrate not only that this cannot occur (as opposed to simply violating some aspect of plausibility regarding statistical results) but how it can be counter-demonstrated in terms of Nobel Prize selection. (For example: What are the numbers for Nobel nominees, regardless who eventually gets selected for the prize?)
Now, as to this part of your OP
If you are most interested in exploring social pressures on evolution, why don’t you find an example that does not require a rehashing of a debate in which you do not want to participate? There must be some other groups or events that could be examined other than the Ashkenazim in relation to the Nobel.
Well, if you want to express your opinions at length with no interjections by those who disagree, write a book.
I haven’t seen any such people in this thread, but in case you’re assuming I’m one of them, I’ll just restate my stance: Nobel prizewinners don’t exist in vacuums. They’re surrounded by other really bright people, typically working at universities and reading/incorporating the research of others to form their breakthrough ideas. If a disproportionate number of winners or Jews, it may be that there is disproportionate number of Jews conducting advanced research, which may be due to a disproportionate number of Jews getting advanced degrees, which may be due to a disproportionate number of Jews going to college, which may be due to a disproportionate number of Jews being part of that pesky “culture of education” thing.
Scotland has given rise to many more famous people, notable in the arts, literature, the sciences and as inventors, philosophers, architects and so on than would be expected for a country of such modest size and population.
Scotsmen invented the television, the telephone, the reaping machine, the iron plough, the kaleidoscope, the adhesive postage stamp. hollow pipe drainage, the vacuum flask, the breech-loading rifle, the percussion cap, ‘lost wax’ metal casting, the reflecting telescope, tarmac, the bicycle, the pneumatic tyre, discovered carbon dioxide, penicillin, the source of the Blue Nile, Victoria Falls, the lymphatic system, coal gas lighting, logarithms, the Absolute temperature scale, the ‘hot blast’ oven pioneered antiseptic and anaesthetic use, composed ‘Auld Lang Syne’, wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations’, founded the first detective agency and Las Palmas Oservatory.
http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/scotland/greatscots.html#beaton
That is true. To provide an insurmountable argument I would have to do that, among other things. However, I’m sure you also know the immense difficulty of doing that properly. Difficulty that often has as its limiting factors time, endurance, skill, and resources rather than fact. All too often individuals brandish retorts such as the one you give and do not realize how to properly draw conclusions from their outcomes. I’ll try to find more precise facts of which you ask. And I will look worse if I do not find them. However, I should hope that when the claims under debate are not too outlandish, the burden of proof should, by mere custom, ought rest on both parties.
What argument have you that a 20-fold advantage can arrise in isolation (of, eg, the general distribution) by a reasonable mechanism?
touche. however, can you think of an example that’s not going to evoke an even harder to defend debate on whether the discussed distinction is actually real?
bryan, you make a clearer argument than i think has been presented so far. you’re saying that the deciding factor in who gets the Nobel is simple seniority. and doubly, that seniority is achieved not as much through merit but perserverence. Jews are much more likely to be the ones who’d even want to pursue academic careers full time, and they just get the spots by the merit of a more winded competition. I state this in a language of contrast, but, in a general sense, I feel that that would be the more precise mechanism.
plausible. but when dissected, do you honestly agree with your argument’s implications? Personally, I have zero ability to judge this. I simply do not know the academic culture well enough yet. A cynic might easily argue exactly that. Ugh, again I am forced to use connotated, pre-conditioning language. Cynics are right as often as optimists!
I should also add that while i’m not entirely sure, this argument probably need not claim that there be 20 times as many Jewish professors or aspiring laureates. Like I said, smaller differences will be amplified. I wish I could frame the math more concretely. Any statisticians around? Still, at this level the advantage cannot be too subtle. It may be sufficient to have a 10% boost for the general pop, but the narrower you make the circle around the Nobel winners, the less they become like an outlier, and the more the demographic differences at the mean and the laureates converge.
Hmm, I just realized that it need not necessarily be that competition in academics is slack. It could also be that smart Jews are simply more likely to pursue a career in acadimia than others. However, that would mean they should be underrepresented in other intellectual fields. For example, Hispanics enjoy baseball, which is why you don’t see them dominating tennis. I do not believe Jews tend to be more likely choose to be professors. It seems there’s plenty of Jewish lawyers, doctors, and businessmen too. Anyone have numbers?
Hmm, that’s interesting regarding the Scotts. Maybe we’ve found a more pc example? (as you can tell, I’m writing as I read… for better or worse.) However, we would need at least rough statistics as support. A list of achievements places the burden on us to come up with an estimate of a similar list of achievements for everyone else. That’s more uncertain than even the most feeble of numbers.
Oh, also, I think it’ll be a good idea to copy here the Economist article, which most of you cannot access.
Alex, please do not post copyrighted articles in their entirety to this board.
If there are particular quotations that you find relevant, you may post those excerpts provided they fall under Fair Use guidelines.
[ /Moderating ]
Did they? My understanding was that the concept of Ashkenazis as a distinct group, appeared much later, during the middle-ages at the earliest, first centered in eastern France/ western Germany, then expanding towards the east, including on the way existing communities with different traditions in eastern Europe, and eventually blossoming in Poland. And furthermore never ceased to be joined by newcomers coming from non-Ashkenazi areas : southern Europe (Spain, France, Italy) and Ottoman empire.
This is a genuine question, by the way…
Even though immigrants from the Caribbean basin are “overrepresented” in Major League Baseball, I am pretty sure that you will find that they still make up a tiny fraction of the citizens from the countries from which they came. The fact that one can find a lot of Jewish physicians, lawyers, or jewelers says nothing in regards to jewish academics.
In case you would wonder, the quote I responded to above was taken from the copyrighted material posted by ** Alex_Dubinsky ** and deleted by ** Tomndeb **
I don’t remember the detalis of the deleted post, but it treated sickle cell anemia as a disease found only in West African populations. From other threads on this board, I seem to recall that that’s absolutely incorrect, and that the disease occurs in people from throughout the Mediterranean region and not just in black or African people. [The thrust of the article was ‘it’s possible that Tay-Sachs disease is associated with higher intelligence, just as sickle cell anemia is associated with blackness.’] The article seems to have been way off on that count.
In fairness, the sickle-cell paragraph might have been an analogy inserted by the reporter rather than the claims of the researchers. The following paragraphs explain the analogy:
It then goes on to claim that Gaucher’s, the only one to permit its victims to live to maturity, has a very high incidence among technical and scholastic professions.
I’m not agreeing with the OP, but this is a weak argument. It certainly explains the absence of Indian and Chinese Nobelists, but not the over-represention of Jews in the culture from which the committee took candidates.
At the time the prize began, the barriers of prejudice were much reduced. We can examine another Nobel category however. Going into literature was open for Jews, certainly, and it might be considered to be a very plausible career goal considering the tradition of literacy. However, great literature is not dependent on intelligence to the level that great science is. Jews, as far as I can remember, are not over-represented in the ranks of Nobel Prize winners for literature. (There’s Singer, anyone else?)
I’m not saying that this proves anything, but the argument is not quite as flawed as you make it to be.
Barring data, the argument is exactly as flawed as I indicated–not that it is implausible or impossible, but that it needs to account for the various possibilities without merely declaring that something cannot be true simply because one manner of examining the statistics makes it appear unlikely.
My anecdotal example was genuine - the Scots are proud of their achievements.
However it shows some of the weaknesses of this thread:
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why does political correctness come into this? If you have facts, it’s not prejudice
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a list of Nobel prize winners is a rough statistic in itself (for one thing, there have been disputes over who really made a particular breakthrough)
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it’s not clear how you define Scottish (consider the migration to and from Ireland, the clans, the ‘division’ between Highland and Lowland etc)