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Comment by ckuehne | Hacker News Reader

"This is perhaps more easily understood when you know that the Jewish culture places enormous focus on educating the next generation and on critical thinking"

Or maybe it is even better understood in terms of genetic differences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence.

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It isn't even proven that the difference is genetic. There should be a study where they take Jewish kids that are raised in non-jewish families and look for the difference, then they should take non-jewish kids who were raised in a jewish families as jews and look for difference, even then it would not prove. For better measure they should take identical twins both jewish and non-jewish where one of the twin is raised as a jew and other as not jew. Even then they should take into account which environment they were in during prenatal period, jewish or non-jewish. Since these strict requirements are unrealistic to ever be achieved I view those types of arguments as more speculations than anything else. It is not a secret that even many scientists often fail to understand statistical data correctly, and in these kind of studies in particular there may even be certain motivation to project data at a certain "angle" to look it more like you want it to look.

I doubt it. Culture is key. Being in the right place at the right time, having a network of folks interested in your welfare, etc is key.

Think of it this way -- how many smart people from school or childhood do you know who didn't amount to much, despite the raw ability to achieve. Now think about your work life -- how many times have worked for or witnessed a blithering idiot in charge of thing at your job or a customers org?

Culture matters.

Well to be cynical - if most people are blithering idiots and most people don't amount to much, it could be true that most smart people don't amount to much and most people in charge are idiots while still true that being smart makes you much more likely to be in charge :o)

Which seems like the result of generations of selective pressure exerted by a culture that values education and critical thinking.

"Culture" is an empty explanation. The question is: were your odds of getting married and having children as a Medieval Ashkenazi Jew better if you were smarter?

I'm descended from these people and I don't know.

Over that time period is it more likely to be selective pressure or a founder effect?

A founder effect doesn't require continuous selective pressure, it just requires a population with a small group of founders from whom the entire population is descended. For instance, a group that splits off from a larger group, or passes through a population bottleneck. In this situation a set of genes -- inherited from the founder who is the common ancestor of the entire population -- can very rapidly become dominant in a population, not because they are beneficial but because there are no alternatives.

So in other words, if there is an Ashakenzi 'smart gene' it may not be a matter of the selective pressures of the Jewish condition over the last few hundred years, it might just be a matter of descending from a single very smart person.

That could be, but with a founder effect in a population whose European contribution came from a small number of females, we then have to expect either:

* The intelligence came from the European converted-in founder females. In which case, how come we don't see similar intelligence averages in similar European populations?

* Or, the intelligence came from the male Jewish founders. In which case, how come we don't see similar intelligence averages in other Jewish populations?

Both questions can, of course, be accompanied by, "OR DO WE!?!?!?! dun dun duuuun".

The founder effect gives two possible answers:

1. The gene or gene suite originated with one of the founders. Novel mutation or assemblage of uncommon preexisting mutations.

2. The proposed smart gene is not adaptive. Being smart is cool, but only one facet of fitness. The smart gene would then be weeded out of the larger population through selection pressure, but survive in the smaller population through the founder effect.

Interesting that Emmy Noether was Ashkenazi, I knew of Einstein and Bernstein. This theory has been around for a while, not sure what to make of it given what we know now about IQ.

Mental exercise: 1. Take the text replace Ashkenazi Jew with Arian 2. Trust me they (the nazis) had they scientists to proof exactly the same but with Arians.

And see how you kidnap "science" in the same of ideology. That's actually pretty ugly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

That makes no sense. How could one group possibly slowly evolve over a great period of time to be any different than anyone else?

What exactly do you think "makes no sense"? That two groups could evolve different traits over time? If so, how would you explain differences in skin color between West Africans and Northern Europeans? Or differences in lactose tolerance between different ethnic groups [1]?

[1] http://www.foodreactions.org/intolerance/lactose/prevalence....

Hilariously, I think he is just high. Read through his other posts.

Because I live in a western liberal democracy and have been indoctrinated to believe that differences between cultures have no qualitative bearing, they are merely choices among equal values, and as such I cannot possibly comprehend such blatant facts.

Please tell me you knew I was being sarcastic...

Well, I was going to add "EDIT: Or are you just being sarcastic?". Twice. But I didn't. After all, it's Hacker News.

Bravo, you have just disproved evolution.

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