# What explains the SDMB's large Jewish membership? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 17, 2006, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049 "2006-08-17T04:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/21 "2006-08-17T09:18:38Z")
My guess is that because Jewish children are encouraged to read and learn. As adults, they would be attracted to a message board that is a good place to learn new things. Then again, it could be the international Zionist conspiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids :D. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/22 "2006-08-17T11:02:57Z")
[QUOTE=astro] Re “liberal” I don’t really think I’d characterize the general attitudes this way. I really think the board is generally MOR leaning progressives, and there are equal numbers of hard skewing lefties and righties, though the lefties (IMO) do tend to be more sneeringly immature and impolite (overall) than the conservatives… [/QUOTE] I didn’t know you posted here! Welcome to the Straight Dope, Miss Coulter. ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/23 "2006-08-17T11:07:12Z")
[QUOTE=ambushed] I didn’t know you posted here! Welcome to the Straight Dope, Miss Coulter. [/QUOTE] WTF? Pit him if you must, but sheesh, calling somebody Miss Coulter should IMO be akin to calling somebody an asshole. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/24 "2006-08-17T12:07:53Z")
> [@aerodave](#): > > …that causes me to notice when board members are missing on Saturdays, or make an effort to say Og or G-d. These signs point to posters being Jewish??? I often do not post on Saturdays, but that’s because it’s, um, _the weekend_, and I’m generally out doing other things. And “Og” is a Jewish thing? [QUOTE=mr. jp] And why has noone still stated the obvious? Jews are way smarter than other ppl on average, so you would expect them to be overrepresented on an intellectual board. [/quote] Not stated, because it is not only not obvious, but has not been demonstrated to be true. I think you are confusing a general tradition of respect for learning with innate ability. ---
**Author:** ![SailBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/77aa72/32.png) [@SailBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailBunny)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/25 "2006-08-17T12:17:31Z")
The Jewish culture highly emphasizes education and success. Look at the Ivy Leagues…Penn’s white population is 80% Jewish(I only know because I go there). If we hope that the SDMB is full of highly educated people, than it follows that there would be a higher proportion here. ---
**Author:** ![jimmmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/26 "2006-08-17T12:23:36Z")
Somebody ought to do a new poll in IMHO. It [was last done 6 years ago](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=38560&highlight=religion) and it’s results basically agree with tomndebs surmised guess as to the make up of the board. According to that poll I would say atheists/agnostics (who make up ~ [10%](http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#gallup) of the US population are “disproportionate” at the SDMB to the population at large - but I do not like the implied judgement the language provides. Another thread on [How many times have you changed](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=320954&highlight=religion) religions gets at the same question. ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/27 "2006-08-17T12:31:01Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] These signs point to posters being Jewish??? I often do not post on Saturdays, but that’s because it’s, um, _the weekend_, and I’m generally out doing other things. And “Og” is a Jewish thing? [/QUOTE] Well, I meant that I notice these things in context. I never meant to imply that someone who waits until late Saturday night to respond to a post must automatically be a Jew. And forget the Og thing…but i do take G-d to be more of an indicator. But, as most of the vocal and active members of the board have no problem discussing their religious affiliation, I don’t generally see the need to make these assumptions. Most of our Jewish board members are happy to self-identify. And 20%…nah…i was just throwing out numbers without thinking too hard. But I stand by the possibility that 10% is around the real value…which is still a noticeable over-representation. For the sake of my OP, I think \*_tomndebb_ may be the closest to the real answer (of the two or three posts that have actually attempted to answer anything). A cultural inclination towards learned discussion is a likely cause. An attempt at providing my own solution: Perhaps it’s not really an over-representation of Jews by membership, but by sheer post volume. If Jewish folks as a group like good intellectual discussion, perhaps they are more inclined to take the time to type out a GQ response or jump on a heated GD thread. So maybe they have a much higher than average post frequency, thus making themselves some of the more visible members of the board. ---
**Author:** ![nameless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/779978/32.png) [@nameless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nameless)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/28 "2006-08-17T12:42:00Z")
[QUOTE=mr. jp] My guess would be that jews are overrepresented. And why has noone still stated the obvious? Jews are way smarter than other ppl on average, so you would expect them to be overrepresented on an intellectual board. Arguments that jews are smarter: -22% of nobel prize winners are jews. This is a crazy overrepresentation compared to the population. -The Bell curve states that jews might have up to a full deviation above the mean in IQ. - 8 out of 14 world chess champions are jews. [/QUOTE] 11 of 776 Nobel Prize winners are black. This represents 1.42% of the awarded nobel prizes, a figure which grossly underrepresents the black population. Are black people therefore less intelligent? Or, perhaps, is there some third variable in play (such as socioeconomic status, bias in the Nobel committee, or cultural attitude towards education)? Perhaps winning the nobel prize is not necessarily a good indicator of innate intelligence–at the very least I think it’s positively ludicrous to turn around and apply Nobel Prize recipient statistics to an entire ethnic group. I’ve yet to see someone cite _The Bell Curve_ and not get ripped to shreds, but I’ll just say that the book’s methodology is extremely controversial and is perhaps not a good way to convince us that Jews have heightened intelligence as a group. Finally, chess is not a good indicator of raw intelligence. It is a skill that relies on the ability to think creatively and strategically, but it is not an appropriate metric to determine something as broad as “intelligence”. To extrapolate and call one ethnic group more innately intelligent based on that is absurd. Even taken together, I don’t think these pieces of circumstantial evidence are convincing. **Tomndebb** said it best when he pointed out that Jewish culture has a history of intellectual inquiry. ---
**Author:** ![Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/29 "2006-08-17T13:48:40Z")
[QUOTE=SailBunny] Penn’s white population is 80% Jewish [/QUOTE] Impossible. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/30 "2006-08-17T13:54:31Z")
[QUOTE=mks57] Then again, it could be the international Zionist conspiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids :D. [/QUOTE] But they’re not gonna pollute our beer, right? 'Cuz I just couldn’t live with that … ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/31 "2006-08-17T16:44:36Z")
The demographics of the SDMB strike me as being quite similar to my undergraduate college, which was a highly selective college with even more of a reputation for being liberal than most such colleges. The average student was moderately liberal, but there were some outspoken very liberal and very conservative students. Somewhere between 5% and 10% of the student body was ethnically Jewish. There were more students that were admittedly gay than average for the U.S. population. There were more students that were outspoken about their atheism or agnosticism than was average for the U.S. population and less that were outspoken about their Christianity than was average for the U.S. population. In other words, there’s nothing special about the SDMB that’s not also true for a highly selective college with a tendency toward liberalness. I think these characteristics are more true for long-time posters than the short-time posters. I suspect that less educated posters tend to discover quickly that poorly stated questions tend to get made fun of and drift away from the SDMB. I think a new poster with very conservative views who wasn’t willing to stick with a message board where many people disagree with him would also tend to drift away from the SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/32 "2006-08-17T17:44:39Z")
[QUOTE=nameless] 11 of 776 Nobel Prize winners are black. This represents 1.42% of the awarded nobel prizes, a figure which grossly underrepresents the black population. Are black people therefore less intelligent? Or, perhaps, is there some third variable in play (such as socioeconomic status, bias in the Nobel committee, or cultural attitude towards education)? Perhaps winning the nobel prize is not necessarily a good indicator of innate intelligence–at the very least I think it’s positively ludicrous to turn around and apply Nobel Prize recipient statistics to an entire ethnic group. I’ve yet to see someone cite _The Bell Curve_ and not get ripped to shreds, but I’ll just say that the book’s methodology is extremely controversial and is perhaps not a good way to convince us that Jews have heightened intelligence as a group. Finally, chess is not a good indicator of raw intelligence. It is a skill that relies on the ability to think creatively and strategically, but it is not an appropriate metric to determine something as broad as “intelligence”. To extrapolate and call one ethnic group more innately intelligent based on that is absurd. Even taken together, I don’t think these pieces of circumstantial evidence are convincing. **Tomndebb** said it best when he pointed out that Jewish culture has a history of intellectual inquiry. [/QUOTE] Why are you saying all this? I said they were smarter, is that the same as “more intelligent” in your vocabulary? Anyway, I’ll rephrase smarter to “more skilled in intellectual matters”. Just to be clear, I am not trying to say that people who get more nobel prizes are more intelligent. I am saying that when a group is more succesful in many intellectual areas such as chess, winning nobel prizes, taking IQ tests, etc, it is likely that they are more succesful in other intellectual areas, such as the SDMB. [QUOTE=Jackmannii] These signs point to posters being Jewish??? I often do not post on Saturdays, but that’s because it’s, um, _the weekend_, and I’m generally out doing other things. And “Og” is a Jewish thing?Not stated, because it is not only not obvious, but has not been demonstrated to be true. I think you are confusing a general tradition of respect for learning with innate ability. [/QUOTE] No, Im not confusing anything. I am just giving some arguments that jews are “more skilled in intellectual matters”. I am not saying I know anything about whether this is innate or due to a tradition with respect for learning. ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/33 "2006-08-17T17:47:45Z")
“Why are you saying all this? I said they were smarter, is that the same as “more intelligent” in your vocabulary?” And is “more intelligent” the same as “higher IQ”? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/34 "2006-08-17T18:13:39Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] . And “Og” is a Jewish thing? [/QUOTE] I thought it was a typo that became a habit, as in “Og smash!” ?? Penn’s white population 80% Jewish?? [\<\\> So 6000 Jewish students. Say 70% of the students are white, so 6000/14000 \< 80% but still significant. ---
**Author:** ![Slypork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@Slypork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slypork)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/35 "2006-08-17T18:29:36Z")
[QUOTE=FinnAgain] Anyways, I’m not necessarily sure that the board is chock full of Jews. [/QUOTE] “Chock Full O’ Jews”, the Kosher Koffee! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/36 "2006-08-17T20:10:11Z")
I think management would have to do this. They could ask religion , sex, age, . Then compile . A thread is too restrictive. ---
**Author:** ![nameless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/779978/32.png) [@nameless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nameless)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/37 "2006-08-17T22:06:19Z")
[QUOTE=mr. jp] Why are you saying all this? I said they were smarter, is that the same as “more intelligent” in your vocabulary? [/QUOTE] Well… [yeah](http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=smart), actually. > [@](#): > > Anyway, I’ll rephrase smarter to “more skilled in intellectual matters”. I’m not sure that helps. Maybe I am just reflexively opposing a statement that, on its face, suggests that Jews are just innately smarter than other ethnic groups. You’ve clarified that you do not know whether this is genetic or environmental. I’m still not even convinced that it can be shown that Jews are smarter than the population as a whole. You can maybe show that they play chess better on average, or that they win disproportionate amounts of Nobel Prizes, but that can’t be extrapolated–it’s just too broad of a claim that you’re trying to support. There’s not a definition of intelligence that enough people agree on to assess whether one ethnic group is “more intelligent” than another. ---
**Author:** ![flight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbce88/32.png) [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2006, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/38 "2006-08-18T03:02:50Z")
[QUOTE=uglybeech] I grew up in an area which is 30% Jewish. Half my childhood friends were Jewish. And yet, when I read the boards, it seems no more than one out of ten posters are Jewish. If that. Can somebody please explain why there are so few Jews on the SDMB??? [/QUOTE] Just saw _Annie Hall_ again recently (I think that may have been by a Jewish guy) and your post reminded me of the scene where the screen is split with Annie and Alvie each sitting in their therapists’ offices. Therapists: So, how often do you have sex? Alvie: Hardly ever, maybe three times a week. Annie: Constantly, probably three times a week. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2006, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/39 "2006-08-18T03:11:01Z")
I think a better question is “Why are there so many non-US/Canadian members here, when the Straight Dope column isn’t published outside North America?” ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2006, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049/40 "2006-08-18T03:20:42Z")
I’ve always been disturbed by the large proportion of SDMB Methodists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-explains-the-sdmbs-large-jewish-membership/369049.md?page=3)