What if Jews are just better?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

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?

Well, for many of us who were in the Christian cult, it was precisely that kind of authoritarian nonsense that we rejected and instead asked even more questions, which in turn led to our deprogramming.

Regardless, neither is necessarily a measure of intelligence and certainly not in regard to IQ tests.

 

[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?

Well, for many of us who were in the Christian cult, it was precisely that kind of authoritarian nonsense that we rejected and instead asked even more questions, which in turn led to our deprogramming.

Regardless, neither is necessarily a measure of intelligence and certainly not in regard to IQ tests.

It's not... it's about setting the stage for rejecting knowledge and freethought versus respecting knowledge and freethought, at a basic fundamental level.
How much capability or capacity one has for greatness is irrelevant if one is trained to repress curiosity and information sharing at a young age.. and even condemn education they do not have as evil indoctrination and that which they do have as unquestionable, unmoving truth.

 

[Metaphor]

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.

No. You have misunderstood what he has said. In fact, you appear to have interpreted it as the exact opposite of what he has said.

Dembrowski said only the overall score is useful, and the component scores are not useful. (I don't agree that the component scores are not useful, however).

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.

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.

IQ tests do not rely on the rote memorization of facts, although working memory is a component in them.

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.

No. That isn't how IQ tests work or random sampling.

 

[lpetrich]

I'm not impressed by those who claim that there are genetic differences in average IQ between various groups. Such people don't seem to want to turn society's leadership over those with genetically more IQ. If Jews have genetically more IQ, then society's leadership ought to be turned over to them. Political leadership, business leadership, educational leadership, you name it.

There is a further problem. This high-IQ stereotype of Jews gets turned against them, with the implication that they are short on moral scruples, that they are devious and crooked and dishonest and sleazy. Thus they are not worthy of leadership positions.

I recall from somewhere that a similar thing happens to Eastern Asians. They are often stereotyped as very diligent workers, but also that they are stereotyped as plodding and uncreative and un-innovative, and thus not worthy of leadership positions.

 

[repoman]

I'm not impressed by those who claim that there are genetic differences in average IQ between various groups. Such people don't seem to want to turn society's leadership over those with genetically more IQ. If Jews have genetically more IQ, then society's leadership ought to be turned over to them. Political leadership, business leadership, educational leadership, you name it.

There is a further problem. This high-IQ stereotype of Jews gets turned against them, with the implication that they are short on moral scruples, that they are devious and crooked and dishonest and sleazy. Thus they are not worthy of leadership positions.

I recall from somewhere that a similar thing happens to Eastern Asians. They are often stereotyped as very diligent workers, but also that they are stereotyped as plodding and uncreative and un-innovative, and thus not worthy of leadership positions.

Isn't this an argument from consequence?

 

[Metaphor]

I'm not impressed by those who claim that there are genetic differences in average IQ between various groups. Such people don't seem to want to turn society's leadership over those with genetically more IQ. If Jews have genetically more IQ, then society's leadership ought to be turned over to them.

That simply does not follow.

If people with Ahskenazi Jewish ancestry have a higher group average (say by half a standard deviation), that does not mean that each member of the group is staggeringly gifted and more qualified than every non-Jew in the population. And nobody should be handed power based on IQ alone. That's like handing power to the gross underachievers in MENSA.

Political leadership, business leadership, educational leadership, you name it.

There is a further problem. This high-IQ stereotype of Jews gets turned against them, with the implication that they are short on moral scruples, that they are devious and crooked and dishonest and sleazy. Thus they are not worthy of leadership positions.

I recall from somewhere that a similar thing happens to Eastern Asians. They are often stereotyped as very diligent workers, but also that they are stereotyped as plodding and uncreative and un-innovative, and thus not worthy of leadership positions.

People will advance stereotypes whether they are true or not. That's no reason to cover up the truth.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

People will advance stereotypes whether they are true or not.

Only accurate thing you’ve ever posted.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

If Jews have genetically more IQ, then society's leadership ought to be turned over to them.

Why?
Imagine, hypothetically, that conclusive evidence of this is found. Would you then support that which you say ought to be done?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I recall from somewhere that a similar thing happens to Eastern Asians. They are often stereotyped as very diligent workers, but also that they are stereotyped as plodding and uncreative and un-innovative, and thus not worthy of leadership positions.

Yes and no--I agree with this perception but it's their educational system, not genetics. They value conformity a lot more than we do.

 

[lpetrich]

If Jews have genetically more IQ, then society's leadership ought to be turned over to them.

Why?
Imagine, hypothetically, that conclusive evidence of this is found. Would you then support that which you say ought to be done?

I should have expressed myself more clearly. I was talking about the viewpoints of the sorts of IQ hereditarians who believe in superior and inferior races, and who believe that allegedly superior races should have all the leadership positions. Would they be willing to accept for themselves what they demand that others accept?

As to those stereotypes about Asians, I'll quote  Bamboo ceiling:

The term "bamboo ceiling" was coined in 2005 by Jane Hyun in Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians, where she addresses the barriers faced by many Asian Americans in the professional arena, such as stereotypes and racism, while also providing solutions to overcome these barriers.[1][2] The bamboo ceiling, as defined by Jane Hyun, is a combination of individual, cultural, and organizational factors that impede Asian Americans' career progress inside organizations.

Since the publication of Hyun's book, a variety of sectors (including nonprofits, universities, and the government) have discussed the impact of the ceiling as it relates to people of Asian descent and the challenges they face. As described by a senior writer at Fortune magazine, "bamboo ceiling" refers to the processes and barriers that serve to exclude Asians and Asian-Americans from executive positions on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of leadership potential" and "lack of communication skills" that cannot actually be explained by job performance or qualifications.[3] Articles regarding the subject have been written in Crains, Fortune, The Atlantic and Forbes (2016).[4][5][6]

The term is a derivative of the glass ceiling, which refers to the more general metaphor used to describe invisible barriers through which women and minorities can see managerial positions, but cannot reach them. Similar metaphor includes canvas ceiling[7] posed on refugees and their workforce integration efforts.

Based on publicly available government statistics, Asian Americans have the lowest chance of rising to management when compared with African Americans, Hispanics and women in spite of having the highest educational attainment.[8][9][10][11][12][13]

 

[lpetrich]

I remember reading Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man". The first part of it was great, describing the follies of IQ hereditarians, like their tying themselves into knots about why more recent immigrants did not seem as smart as less recent ones.

The US Army's IQ tests in World War I were interesting. White soldiers scored better than black ones from their states in every state, but some northern blacks scored better than some southern whites, something that discomfited some southern politicians. So it was something like

• Northern whites
• Southern whites, northern blacks
• Southern blacks

It's clear that there are oodles of evidence of environmental influence on IQ and similar psychological effects.

The second part of his book I found rather weak. SJG spends a lot of effort trying to discredit factor analysis, and I found that *very* unconvincing. In fairness to him, some of his targets seem to have concluded too much, like Charles Spearman with his "g" factor. It is a correlation between scores in several activities, something that he called general intelligence -- and that he concluded was hereditary. But "g" can be real without being completely hereditary. It can be a side effect of learning several things at the same time, something typical of educational systems. Spearman believed that "g" reflects some shared ability, and I think that he could be correct about that with it still being largely or mostly environmentally controlled.

 

[lpetrich]

A common form of factor analysis is principal components analysis. It involves fitting a multidimensional ellipsoid to the data points. One can then read off the lengths and directions of the axes of that ellipsoid. The directions are given as projections onto each of the data variables, and the projection values are sometimes called "factor loadings".

Spearman had used an early form of factor analysis in his work on "g" that he published back in 1904. His "g" was a single factor, of course.

I recall this book's name from SJG's book:  The Vectors of Mind by American psychologist Louis Leon Thurstone in 1935. It was about factor analysis with multiple factors, the "vectors" in its title.

Nowadays, it's much easier than in Spearman's or Thurstone's day -- one can easily do the calculations with a readily-available statistical package on a readily-available laptop-computer.