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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

Here's an interesting extract:

> We find evidence of nepotism for 5–6.6% of scholars’ sons in Protestant and for 29.4% in Catholic universities and academies. Catholic institutions relied more heavily on intra-family human capital transfers. We show that these differences partly explain the divergent path of Catholic and Protestant universities after the Reformation.

This relates to an important paper providing evidence that indeed Protestantism was associated with scientific progress: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4389708

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"Protestants also tried to impose their own bigotry but lacked sufficient coordination and authority. Had they been more effective, modern science and sustained economic growth might have never taken off."

That's an interesting take. It seems to have a continental Europe perspective. In the first 150 years of the American colonies, Catholicism was illegal, except for Pennsylvania. However, even there, Catholics remained disenfranchised. The first Catholic university in the US, Georgetown, opened in 1789. (Harvard: 1636, Yale: 1701). The first amendment was ratified in 1791 (meaning Catholicism could no longer be made illegal). Catholics were mostly unwelcome to attend other schools, that was the reason for divergence and almost certainly assured a high nepotism rate. Also note that in the 1700's/1800's nepotism in government was considered normal.

>Also note that in the 1700's/1800's nepotism in government was considered normal.

I think this is still common. People like to think a son or daughter will govern just like a parent. But it sometimes doesn't work that way.

Catholicism was legal for some of those 150 years in Maryland; the colony was founded by Catholics and intended as a haven for them. Protestants moved in from elsewhere and eventually outlawed Catholicism though.

True, but it became illegal in 1689 until ~1776. That's a lot of years. The proprietor converted to Protestantism, and I believe in 1725 the administration of the estate was returned by the Crown to the Calvert family. The net effect was unremarkable, even though it was one of the successful armed insurrections in the early Americas.

> indeed Protestantism was associated with scientific progress

I've always blamed this on there not being an "orthodox" Protestantism. Since every protestant preacher is a different religion, it enabled atheists to work freely (as unspecified mystery protestants.)

i’d be more interested in jewish numbers than protestant or catholic

Judaism like Protestantism promotes education and reading for all. Plus Judaism promotes some form of debate.

Jews are the most clannish people I have ever met and the most prone to shameless nepotism (speaking as Jew).

Agree. Hollywood and Wallstreet are great examples. Also the founders of Google and Facebook. It's no coincidence. Though I'm not sure this is nepotism as much as it is organized clan behavior.

I think Indians are even more so but there it's about caste and not just being Indian.

Humans are weird.

I can't speak for all South Asian Americans, but in my experience caste is not a significant player in our community in the US at least.

Alternatives like University Affiliation, Regional ties, Ethnic ties, Clan ties, and Workplace affiliation play a greater role due to the nature of South Asian immigration in the US (tends to be white collar professionals across all ethnic groups).

Treating South Asian Americans homogeneously will lead to the same mistakes like treating all Latinos homogeneously - plenty of South Asian heavy battleground counties like Loudoun County, Middlesex County, Williamson County, Kern County, San Joaquin County, etc have seen Ds margins drop significantly in the current election.

That said, we are a clannish bunch, and biradari (and every other South Asian language's equivalent of that word) is our guanxi.

Kern and San Joaquin in particular are the exact opposite of white collar professional immigration and more similar to Guyana. (My great grandfather came during that 1920s era but jumped ship in NYC instead) People often forget some of us came before 1965. Vivek Bald has an excellent book about it.

My point about Kern and SJV was about how Desi Americans are a swing vote, not the white collar portion.

That said I do agree with you to a certain extent that pre-Tech immigration absolutely was a thing (and a major factor in the Punjabi community across western US).

> more similar to Guyana. (My great grandfather came during that 1920s era but jumped ship in NYC instead

Oh dang, that's pretty wild! I thought most immigration to Guyana from South Asia during that era was primarily from Eastern UP, Bihar, and West Bengal, not Sindh/Punjab.

Yes but that was the 1920s ethnic pattern to USA too, see Bald’s book. Most of my great grandfather’s NYC compatriots would have been from the areas you mentioned and he was the exception (although his family was originally decades before from Bareilly so it kind of proves the rule). Guyana was a blue collar thing like you intuited.

sure… only because you haven’t experienced the inner circles of other religions (speaking as another relgion than Jewish)

Lol I guess you haven't met Mormons?

I'm not sure how the above relates to the argument.

What does that have to do with nepotism?

Jewish communities are more tightly knit, and the families in these communities more interwoven with one another than the average Protestant would be to their own.

My intuition would be that nepotism would be more rife with this kind of community makeup, if you know your distant family and your family friends very well they're much more likely to try to help you out.

> Judaism like Protestantism

Judaism is nothing like protestantism or even catholicism. If it were, we wouldn't have protestantism or catholicism. Judaism ( by that I mean real judaism ) is racial/ethnic and centered around bloodlines while protestantism is universal.

> promotes education and reading for all.

No. Judaism promotes the study of torah/tanakh and even that is only within their own people. Judaism most certainly does not promote education in the general sense and not to the general public. That modern jews in the west pursue education is not due to judaism but to european culture.

> Plus Judaism promotes some form of debate.

In a superficial manner. Like how protestants and catholics debate. Certainly not in the socratic way of the greeks.

Judaism didn't go around the world spreading literacy like Catholicism and especially Protestantism did. After all the jewish god is only for the jews while the christian god is for all humanity.

> In a superficial manner. Like how protestants and catholics debate. Certainly not in the socratic way of the greeks.

Isn't it basically a meme now that when you ask a rabbi a question you get a question in return? I think that's a cultural difference.

That has nothing to do with Judaism. And everything to do with european culture and european rabbinic 'judaism'.

Judaism isn’t immune to anti-intellectual fundamentalism.

A good example is the 11th Century Mediterranean world.

In the Muslim sphere of influence, Jewish culture was highly intellectual, and produced numerous scholars.

In the Christian sphere of influence, Jewish culture was highly fundamentalist, and produced almost no native Jewish scholars.

Heck, modern day Israel or New York offers almost the same contrast, as did the first century Middle East.

Judaisms tendency to split into these two camps, usually simultaneously, is one of its many fascinating features.

> In the Christian sphere of influence, Jewish culture was highly fundamentalist, and produced almost no native Jewish scholars.

Hum... Just have a look at a list of Nobel prize winners.

The 11th Century Christian-based Jewish community produced no Nobel Prize winners.

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