What if Jews are just better?

[Metaphor]

Congratulations on your ability to prop up your errors with equivocation; That must be very comforting for you.

Non. A population is a population whether you believe it to be a population or not.

But a gene pool doesn't give two shits that you like to use the word 'population' to mean other things too.

Whoever argued otherwise?

I honestly don't believe that you are as stupid as you are making out, so I can only conclude that your position is a quasi-religious one and so has no input from reason, other than to form rationalisations to support your preconceptions.

I never once suggested that YOU had proposed any public policy, but again, I can't believe you are so unaware of the history of this topic as to naïvely imagine that no public policy implications exist.

And this extremely well known history tells us that your philosophy is dearly beloved of authoritarian regimes.

Either you can point to something I've said and advocate which is wrong, or you can stop with your guilty by imagined association ass hattery. Or continue with it, I can't stop you.

 

[bilby]

Non. A population is a population whether you believe it to be a population or not.



Whoever argued otherwise?

I honestly don't believe that you are as stupid as you are making out, so I can only conclude that your position is a quasi-religious one and so has no input from reason, other than to form rationalisations to support your preconceptions.

I never once suggested that YOU had proposed any public policy, but again, I can't believe you are so unaware of the history of this topic as to naïvely imagine that no public policy implications exist.

And this extremely well known history tells us that your philosophy is dearly beloved of authoritarian regimes.

Either you can point to something I've said and advocate which is wrong, or you can stop with your guilty by imagined association ass hattery. Or continue with it, I can't stop you.

OK, perhaps I am starting to believe that you really can be as stupid and naïve as you appear.

 

[Metaphor]

Non. A population is a population whether you believe it to be a population or not.



Whoever argued otherwise?

I honestly don't believe that you are as stupid as you are making out, so I can only conclude that your position is a quasi-religious one and so has no input from reason, other than to form rationalisations to support your preconceptions.

I never once suggested that YOU had proposed any public policy, but again, I can't believe you are so unaware of the history of this topic as to naïvely imagine that no public policy implications exist.

And this extremely well known history tells us that your philosophy is dearly beloved of authoritarian regimes.

Either you can point to something I've said and advocate which is wrong, or you can stop with your guilty by imagined association ass hattery. Or continue with it, I can't stop you.

OK, perhaps I am starting to believe that you really can be as stupid and naïve as you appear.

Well, you can't help what you believe.

 

[Trausti]

Jews always had strong community ties and support. Culture does matter.

So if culture values education and pursuit of knowledge don't you think that eventually over generations it would select corresponding genes?
I mean smartest jew gets more women and children, you know, Darwin and shit, no?

It is amazing how many claim to accept evolution and natural selection but then express bewilderment about the implication of these things on human biodiversity.

 

[ruby sparks]

I mean smartest jew gets more women and children...

It could be the opposite.

If intelligence were positively correlated to income (which doesn’t seem unreasonable) then the lowest earners have the most children and the highest earners have the fewest, in the USA, and also around the world.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/

 

[bilby]

Jews always had strong community ties and support. Culture does matter.

So if culture values education and pursuit of knowledge don't you think that eventually over generations it would select corresponding genes?
I mean smartest jew gets more women and children, you know, Darwin and shit, no?

It is amazing how many claim to accept evolution and natural selection but then express bewilderment about the implication of these things on human biodiversity.

It's amazing how many claim to accept quantum theory and relativity, but then don't go off on some wild speculation in those fields without having bothered to grasp that they are more complex than can be learned purely from Youtube videos and pop-sci articles in glossy magazines.

For some reason, every moron with a pulse seems to imagine themselves equally qualified to pontificate about evolution and natural selection with actual evolutionary scientists, despite their hesitation to make similar asses of themselves with respect to other theories.

It's truly bizarre.

Humanity is highly promiscuous, highly mobile, and has recently exhibited a massive population increase. To expect significant biodiversity to exist between casually identified sub-populations, rather than across the entire gene pool, in such a species, would be truly dumb.

We would expect (as we observe) that variation within such sub-populations is sufficient to overwhelm any variation between them. Rendering any public policy implications valueless. And yet this thread isn't in Natural Science, where evolutionary science nerds can revel in the tiny and (to everyone else) tedious minor fluctuations in genetics and the almost undetectable influence these have on phenotypes; It's in Political Discussions, where those posting, and those reading, presumably have an interest from a public policy perspective.

Well the science is clear (if not simple): There are no sensible public policy inferences to be drawn from human genetics; people are too genetically homogeneous for any such inferences not to be swamped by extraneous factors. (Doubly so as we are a social species with a long childhood).

 

[Trausti]

It is amazing how many claim to accept evolution and natural selection but then express bewilderment about the implication of these things on human biodiversity.

It's amazing how many claim to accept quantum theory and relativity, but then don't go off on some wild speculation in those fields without having bothered to grasp that they are more complex than can be learned purely from Youtube videos and pop-sci articles in glossy magazines.

For some reason, every moron with a pulse seems to imagine themselves equally qualified to pontificate about evolution and natural selection with actual evolutionary scientists, despite their hesitation to make similar asses of themselves with respect to other theories.

It's truly bizarre.

Humanity is highly promiscuous, highly mobile, and has recently exhibited a massive population increase. To expect significant biodiversity to exist between casually identified sub-populations, rather than across the entire gene pool, in such a species, would be truly dumb.

We would expect (as we observe) that variation within such sub-populations is sufficient to overwhelm any variation between them. Rendering any public policy implications valueless. And yet this thread isn't in Natural Science, where evolutionary science nerds can revel in the tiny and (to everyone else) tedious minor fluctuations in genetics and the almost undetectable influence these have on phenotypes; It's in Political Discussions, where those posting, and those reading, presumably have an interest from a public policy perspective.

Well the science is clear (if not simple): There are no sensible public policy inferences to be drawn from human genetics; people are too genetically homogeneous for any such inferences not to be swamped by extraneous factors. (Doubly so as we are a social species with a long childhood).

1. All human traits are subject to selective pressure.

2. Intelligence is a human trait.

3. Human intelligence is subject to selective pressure.

The focus on public policy is misdirection. No public policy is being proposed.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

No public policy is being proposed.

Just implied.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Of course they do. Your own source says so.

Gee, what a shock. You cherry picked.

First, it wasn't the source that said so, it was one of the people interviewed for the sourced article, who went on to say:

“In the field of psychology, we do not have, like we have in medicine, safeguards in place like an FDA,” he says. “We have an ethical code, but that hasn’t stopped a hundred years of inappropriate interpretive practices. Our field needs to evolve.”

One of the ways the tests are frequently misinterpreted, according to Dombrowski, is when any score from the test besides the overall IQ is used. IQ tests measure a variety of skills like working memory, fluid reasoning, verbal comprehension and more. But he notes the science suggests IQ tests are still not well equipped to provide meaningful scores for these separate abilities, and should be interpreted only as measuring someone’s overall general intelligence.

The source then further broke that down:

But how accurately do IQ scores represent an individual’s true ability? One cognitive scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, says we need to question what IQ tests are actually telling us. Steven Piantadosi uses cross-cultural psychology experiments to study the universal nature of human cognition and language. He says he feels he has a responsibility to speak up against sloppy claims about intelligence, as he recently did in this Twitter thread.

One of the biggest problems, Piantadosi says, is that someone’s IQ score can change based on the context. “IQ tests are known to be sensitive to things like motivation and coaching. This makes a lot of sense — if you try less, you’re not going to score as high. Or, if you don’t know strategies that people do, you won’t score as highly as them,” he says. “I think it’s a mistake to say that your true ability can be summarized by how much you’re willing to put into a test.”

Another issue is the cultural bias baked into the nature of the test itself.
...
Dombrowski points out that all measures are biased to some degree, but IQ test publishers do attempt to eliminate bias in individual test questions. He says they hire experts to flag and throw out problematic questions, and use statistics to remove any questions where one ethnic or racial group performs worse.

But Donna Y. Ford, an educational psychologist at the Ohio State University, says this isn’t good enough.

“(IQ tests) are culturally, linguistically and economically biased against minoritized students, in particular Black, first and foremost, and then Hispanic,” says Ford. “If these tests were not biased, we wouldn’t have different IQ scores along racial and ethnic lines — but we do. It’s an indication that there is something wrong with these tests, not with us.”
...
Although improvements are needed, both Ford and Dombrowski agree that IQ tests can still be useful as one part of an overall assessment of the whole person. But the user ultimately determines whether the tests are interpreted correctly and used for good.

“IQ tests are a tool, and they can be used to promote human well-being, or to contribute to human misery,” says Dombrowski.

Like the white trash bullshit that you're championing.

Ashkenazi Jews are an identifiable group, like any other identifiable group.

Not in regard to IQ testing, since the tests have zero to do with what religion you adhere to and even less to do with whether or not you married someone with those particular religious beliefs.

 

[repoman]

The historical Jews were about religious practice down to many details of life, not like current mega church Christians that have almost no common ties of practice.

Works, not faith.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Jews always had strong community ties and support. Culture does matter.

So if culture values education and pursuit of knowledge don't you think that eventually over generations it would select corresponding genes?
I mean smartest jew gets more women and children, you know, Darwin and shit, no?

Seems to me the poorest people have the largest families. I believe also that in nature, the lush, food ridden, low threat environments tend to mature later and produce fewer offspring.

 

[steve_bank]

For natural selection to manifest those who loose outwill not procreate. Modern science and technology has taken us out of natural selection. There is nothing in our environment that is selecting for survival.

 

[repoman]

Jesus Christ (pun unintended)!

This is about way back in the past 3,000 years or so. Not about now.

But also if there are extremely intelligent people in any group, especially for highly dense and abstract fields, then just an having academic bent for that group will develop those geniuses at a high clip.

 

[Metaphor]

Gee, what a shock. You cherry picked.

First, it wasn't the source that said so, it was one of the people interviewed for the sourced article, who went on to say:



The source then further broke that down:

But how accurately do IQ scores represent an individual’s true ability? One cognitive scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, says we need to question what IQ tests are actually telling us. Steven Piantadosi uses cross-cultural psychology experiments to study the universal nature of human cognition and language. He says he feels he has a responsibility to speak up against sloppy claims about intelligence, as he recently did in this Twitter thread.

One of the biggest problems, Piantadosi says, is that someone’s IQ score can change based on the context. “IQ tests are known to be sensitive to things like motivation and coaching. This makes a lot of sense — if you try less, you’re not going to score as high. Or, if you don’t know strategies that people do, you won’t score as highly as them,” he says. “I think it’s a mistake to say that your true ability can be summarized by how much you’re willing to put into a test.”

Another issue is the cultural bias baked into the nature of the test itself.
...
Dombrowski points out that all measures are biased to some degree, but IQ test publishers do attempt to eliminate bias in individual test questions. He says they hire experts to flag and throw out problematic questions, and use statistics to remove any questions where one ethnic or racial group performs worse.

But Donna Y. Ford, an educational psychologist at the Ohio State University, says this isn’t good enough.

“(IQ tests) are culturally, linguistically and economically biased against minoritized students, in particular Black, first and foremost, and then Hispanic,” says Ford. “If these tests were not biased, we wouldn’t have different IQ scores along racial and ethnic lines — but we do. It’s an indication that there is something wrong with these tests, not with us.”
...
Although improvements are needed, both Ford and Dombrowski agree that IQ tests can still be useful as one part of an overall assessment of the whole person. But the user ultimately determines whether the tests are interpreted correctly and used for good.

“IQ tests are a tool, and they can be used to promote human well-being, or to contribute to human misery,” says Dombrowski.

Like the white trash bullshit that you're championing.

Ashkenazi Jews are an identifiable group, like any other identifiable group.

Not in regard to IQ testing, since the tests have zero to do with what religion you adhere to and even less to do with whether or not you married someone with those particular religious beliefs.

Quoting large parts of your source that do not contradict anything I've said doesn't make you look smart.

Whether the religiosity of Ashkenazi Jews, or the religiosity of their immediate ancestors contributes to Ashkenazi intelligence is an empirical question.

 

[Trausti]

Jews always had strong community ties and support. Culture does matter.

So if culture values education and pursuit of knowledge don't you think that eventually over generations it would select corresponding genes?
I mean smartest jew gets more women and children, you know, Darwin and shit, no?

Seems to me the poorest people have the largest families. I believe also that in nature, the lush, food ridden, low threat environments tend to mature later and produce fewer offspring.

It depends on whether there is selective pressure. E.g., in pre-modern China, those who passed the civil service exam and got government posts had greater reproductive success. May explain high east asian IQ.

 

[steve_bank]

Jesus Christ (pun unintended)!

This is about way back in the past 3,000 years or so. Not about now.

But also if there are extremely intelligent people in any group, especially for highly dense and abstract fields, then just an having academic bent for that group will develop those geniuses at a high clip.

We stiill have plenty of stupid left. Waving nuclear parhelic missiles at each other.

I s anybody now arguing Jews are generically superior instead of generically inferior? Thought I'd heard mot everything until now.

Our brains have probably not changed much in the last 4000 years. Our bsic chimp like primate aggression remains the same..

If you want to claim a group is superior beyomd generalizations you first have to define what superor means and then how to then objectively test the hypothesis.

Hard to do because the definition itself is crafted in the perceptions of the formulators. Inevitably biased. That is how racial stereotypes and biases get stared in the first place, subjected classifications.

As I said I workd with engineers, scientists, and others from around the world. Some educated here. some elsewhere.

On the average I see no fundamental difference. I got to know Somalis and Ethiopians who immigrated. Pretty much like general population. Some go to college and become doctors and lawyers. Some become nurses. Others take regular jobs. Others start businesses.

When I talked to a Jew I knew about the Jewish stereotype hehad a good laugh. Some Jews believe Jews are naturally good businessmen.

His explanation was that historically in Europe going back centuries Jews were denied property ownership. They adapted to becoming good at business that did not need land. Traders and the like. Craftsmen.

 

[barbos]

I mean smartest jew gets more women and children...

It could be the opposite.

If intelligence were positively correlated to income (which doesn’t seem unreasonable) then the lowest earners have the most children and the highest earners have the fewest, in the USA, and also around the world.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/

USA did not exist back then.

 

[barbos]

Jews always had strong community ties and support. Culture does matter.

So if culture values education and pursuit of knowledge don't you think that eventually over generations it would select corresponding genes?
I mean smartest jew gets more women and children, you know, Darwin and shit, no?

Seems to me the poorest people have the largest families. I believe also that in nature, the lush, food ridden, low threat environments tend to mature later and produce fewer offspring.

You are confusing jews with people and now with then.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Quoting large parts of your source that do not contradict anything I've said

It directly contradicted what you've said. IQ tests do not measure intelligence, as there is no such monolithic thing to measure. Here is Dembrowski again (from the Ted talk video):

So, what does the preponderance of the research say about how to properly interpret IQ tests results? Here we come back to the future and return to Binet and Simon’s original inclination. We should place primary emphasis on the global IQ test score (full scale IQ test score) and only nominal, if any, consideration should be given to index level composite scores such as working memory, verbal comprehension, visual-spatial functioning, and processing speed. Why do I say only cautionary emphasis? Because the statistical contribution of these subscale composites is often so low that interpretation of them does little to contribute to an understanding of an individual’s cognitive capacity other than make us feel like we have garnered additional insight, which often is not the case. The preponderance of the empirical evidence does not support the interpretation of an IQ test’s subtests, nor the use of either IQ test subtests or index level composites for purposes of learning disabilities classification or any other psychiatric classification other than intellectual disability.

Of course, we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. There is significant merit to the use of IQ tests. They are necessary for the classification of intellectual disability. They are also useful to gain a sense of an individual’s trajectory for learning and vocational success. For instance, an individual who scores at the 90th percentile on an IQ test’s full scale composite will likely perform better academically and vocationally than an individual who scores at the 10th percentile. Please keep in mind, however, that IQ test results are probabilistic, not deterministic.

It is time for the field of psychology, and policy makers, to regard the preponderance of the scientific research and interpret IQ tests in an evidence-based manner. Will evidence-based IQ test interpretive practice and policy catch on anytime soon? History suggests that it will not. More than 70 years of IQ test cognitive profile analytic research has not found a typology of cognitive score combinations that is useful for diagnosis. Still, many continue to hold out hope and devise new profile analytic methods in search of elusive clinical gold.

Iow, he is arguing that their use is solely for psychological assessment of learning disabilities--problems children may have in an academic or vocational learning sense--not some magical insight into an individual's "level" of intelligence and even then it's only about interpretation in a probabilistic manner, not in any steadystate deterministic manner.

If you have dyslexia--and therefore cannot read very quickly or with much retention--then you will fail most standardized tests, but that doesn't mean you're not intelligent, or that, with special training, you can't overcome your dyslexia. If you have a memory disorder of some kind, then classes like AP European or American History--and the subsequent tests--that rely exclusively on rote memorization of historical trivia (When was the Hundred Year's War?, What is the significance of Bastille Day in France? etc) are going to be extremely difficult for you to get high grades, but that too is not a measure of your intelligence.

So, pointing to an arbitrarily defined group of people and noting that among that group, there are those who have higher IQ scores than others either in the group or externally, tells you exactly nothing about either the group or the individuals in that group in regard to the intelligence of the group as a whole. At best, all it could tell you is that, among that randomly selected group, there are those with few learning disabilities in regard to our standard methods of teaching.

Whether the religiosity of Ashkenazi Jews, or the religiosity of their immediate ancestors contributes to Ashkenazi intelligence

No such monolithic thing...

is an empirical question.

That categorically cannot be answered by looking at individual IQ test scores.

 

[Gun Nut]

Christian Pastor: "Do not think! Just believe everything I say and never question anything!

Jewish Rabbi: "Question the word of God and challenge your Rabbi in order to gain true knowledge and understanding of the world"

Which logically would deliver a more valuable member of society?