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Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why are Askhenazi Jews apparently more intelligent on average... seems that genetics is the main factor, not culture, but I can imagine research in this area is discouraged and controversial.

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Something must have happened during the Middle Ages - in antiquity, the Jews weren't regarded as particularly intelligent compared to other groups - that title went to the Ionian Greeks. There's a hypothesis that medieval restrictions on Jewish occupations & land ownership + Christian restrictions on charging interest pushed Jewish people into financial / lending roles in which intelligence was an advantage (meanwhile, many of the smartest Christian men went into the priesthood with its official celibacy). So you had selection on intelligence genes. Further evidence for this hypothesis is the raft of genetic diseases that disproportionately affect Jews, and are related to brain/nerve development - Canavan disease, familial dysautonomia, Joubert Syndrome, MLIV, Niemann-Pick Disease, Spinal muscular atrophy, Tay-Sachs disease, etc. It's possible that being a carrier for some of those provides some sort of boost to intelligence / brain functioning - otherwise you would expect them to be much less common.

Key word in that sentence would be "apparently" (although feel free to provide hard data backing that claim).

A just as probable explanation (and equally controversial and possibly discouraged)would be that Ashkenazi Jews may or may not have acquired a disproportionate influence (wrt to the %age of the population they comprise), allowing them to be over-represented in certain fields giving them the appearance of being "more intelligent on average"?

Just research it for a bit (google "ashkenazi intelligence"), I think it's pretty evident.

Best I could find is a shady Wikipedia article referencing a controversial study, not exactly compelling evidence... Nevermind that scientists cannot even agree on a standard valid unit of measurement for "intelligence".

edit: Just google "white men can't jump", i think it's pretty obvious

Well I mean, the evidence is pretty strong. Several IQ studies, vastly overrepresented among Nobel Prize winners, Fields Medal winners, ACM Turing Award winners, 6 out of 19 chess champions, etc. I think the disproportionate influence theory is an extremely unlikely explanation (6 out of 19 chess champions? no, that's not because of disproportionate influence).

Research is discouraged, but not impossible.

"Natural history of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Harpending and Cochran is a good start. http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi...

(Hint: It's all genetic.)

Interesting read, but I have some problems with it.

> Another theory suggests that there was selective breeding for Talmudic scholarship. This seems unlikely to have been an important selective factor, since there weren’t very many professional rabbis, certainly less than one percent of the population.

Although there are very few rabbis, majority of ultra-orthodox men spend most part of their time in rabbinic studies until they're very deep into adult life, and their level of success in that field is directly converted into their social status. (Which also means that they don't work and depend on their wives (who are also expected to care about the house and have a lot of children) as well as welfare from state and charities to survive).

This is a relatively recent development and certainly wasn't true for most of Ashkenazi history.

I wonder why it's discouraged? I think it undermines antisemitism rather than otherwise. As it's a benign explanation for jewish overrepresentation in cognitively demanding endeavours.

First because it validates the hypothesis that there are significant differences in intelligence between ethnicities (i.e. if Ashkenazis are genetically smarter, perhaps the lower avg IQ in blacks is at least partly genetic).

And second, it can cause some people to perceive Ash. as "others", enemies and give rise to various conspiracy theories.

I'll grant you the first point. But what sort of conspiracy theory? It elegantly explains overrepresentation without any coordination. Once you account for the Ashkenazis much higher IQ, there isn't anything for a conspiracy to explain.

Yeah, you can be right, both points were just guesses without much thought.

if your people are traditionally discouraged or outright banned from (A) large swaths of roles including land ownership, politics, military and farming and (B) intermarriage with the host country then they are more likely to (1) be filtered into occupations requiring intellectual capital and (2) intramarry to continue a cycle that enforces that strength

Descendant of a guy named Isaac Aaron that was askhenazi.

Pretty living proof I am stupid myself and I have a simple answer to your question. I think this theory is stupid. I am stupid, therefore I am right thus proving my claim.

But can help for the quest about the controversy.

My assumption is research trying to prove the superiority of genes is kind of badly accepted by the opinions and that it makes them all very uneasy when they remember the results of this every time it was made : a bloody war that ended badly for the one claiming superiority.

Historical precedent: the axe claiming they were superior races, the brits and frogs claiming to be superior while colonizing, apartheid, the aristocrats famous last words before heing beheaded, the romans ... the greeks, the persians... before collapsing.

I have blood X therefore I am superior has a tendency to create a spontaneous combustion of the claimers in intense ridicule... and often tremendous pain.

I guess people are superstitious and fear to take the risk.

Or more probably the illuminaty are at works since 500 BC at least... or maybe I am in fact smart, and it is a plain stupid idea proven by my own stupidity as a token of proof...

So still convinced it does not worth being researched, or do you hate them that much that you want them dead by ridicule?

You could study from your existence your relationship to any kind of superiority and publish your results. I would be delighted to validate my theory by experimentation.

It maybe stupid, but who knows? Maybe I am smart. Surely because I have blood. Human blood.

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