I'm still catching up on posting about things I read while I was away on a short break. This is one of them.
As a result of Bret Stephen's recent controversial article in the New York Times, Noah Smith reminded us of a blog post he had written in 2013 which looked at explanations other than high IQ, culture (or conspiracy) which may well show that the apparent success of Jewish folk is somewhat illusory, or explained in more mundane ways.
I thought it raised many good points which I had not heard of before.
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10 comments:
“an impression with many readers that Mr. Stephens was arguing that Jews are genetically superior. That was not his intent.”
There's no accounting for the stupidity of people. The idea that because someone or a group is more intelligent than the norm is not the same as being genetically superior. It's a category error. Being highly intelligent carries a number of risks including increased anxiety and depression, psychoses, increased drug experimentation, and Asperger's. It's not all it is cracked up to be.
I don't know why people believe that evolution evenly spreads intelligence potential but also acknowledge it doesn't do so in some other realms. Some treatments are tailored to address specific ethnic groups. I think a lot of this has more to do with the equipotentiality idea. The reference to "disreputable researchers" may well be a circular argument because any researcher who entertains genetically driven intelligence differences is for many people disreputable by default.
Jewish cultures have spent some 3000 years in close contact with some of the major civilisations of the day. If anything their major periods of exile and immigration and the diasporas that have resulted has made contact with major civilisations more likely. Is it any wonder they've picked up survival smarts and learnt along the way?
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