Kuro5hin.org: technology and culture, from the trenches
create account | help/FAQ | contact | links | search | IRC | site news
[ Everything | Diaries | Technology | Science | Culture | Politics | Media | News | Internet | Op-Ed | Fiction | Meta | MLP ]
We need your support: buy an ad | premium membership

[P]
The Genetic Origin of Ashkenazi Genius

By Thrasymachus in Science
Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 04:40:34 PM EST
Tags: Science (all tags) 		Science

A genetics paper published in the Journal of Biosocial Science in June, “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence,” makes the following claims about Ashkenazi European Jews:

  • They have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group.
  • Their intelligence advantage is genetic.
  • Their intelligence advantage is recent.
  • Jews as a whole are not of above-average intelligence, just the Ashkenazi.
  • Ashkenazi intelligence is a result of natural selection.

The paper is important not just for what it says about the Ashkenazi, but also for what it says about the nature of intelligence and genes. A surprising amount of favorable press coverage was generated over it—positive coverage appeared in both The Economist and The New York Times—despite the fact that the authors are claiming that: a) some racial differences in intelligence exist, and b) that they can be genetic in origin.

ADVERTISEMENT
Sponsor: rusty
This space intentionally left blank
...because it's waiting for your ad. So why are you still reading this? Come on, get going. Read the story, and then get an ad. Alright stop it. I'm not going to say anything else. Now you're just being silly. STOP LOOKING AT ME! I'm done!
comments (24)
active | buy ad
ADVERTISEMENT

The paper's claims in more detail:

Ashkenazi Jews and Intelligence

The Ashkenazi are the population of Jews originating in central and northern Europe. In the 20th century, they made up 3% of the U.S. Population, but won 27% of U.S. Nobel prizes. More than half of world chess champions are Ashkenazi. Einstein, Feynman, and Bobby Fischer are all of Ashkenazi ethnicity.

The Ashkenazi score 12-15 IQ points above the European average on intelligence tests, or in other words 0.75-1.0 standard deviations. They have high verbal and mathematical scores, but have visuospatial scores about 0.5 standard deviations lower than the European mean.

Jews of non-Ashkenazi origin do not have high average IQ scores and are not overrepresented in high-intelligence fields like the sciences.

Genetic Diseases that Increase IQ

The Ashkenazi have certain genetic diseases at an anomalous rate.

59% of Ashkenazi Jews have at least one of a list of alleles associated with specific genetic disorders. These alleles all appear to have something to do with brain function. *

Intelligence testing and occupation studies have shown that there is an intelligence boost in Ashkenazi Jews afflicted with Gaucher's disease, torsion dystonia, and non-classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia. All these conditions are caused by alleles from the list.

Some of these alleles increase the chances of certain cancers, some cause disease when two copies are present. All seem to be present in the Ashkenazi population at a higher rate than predicted by simulation studies. An explanation is that these brain-function related alleles boost fitness in some way for all carriers—59% of Ashkenazi Jews, as mentioned before.

Historical Selection for Intelligence

In medieval Europe, anti-Semitism locked the Ashkenazi Jews into intelligence-demanding careers like money-lending, tax-farming, and the merchant trade. Historical evidence shows that those who were more successful at these jobs—and therefore wealthier—had more children. During this time period, the Ashkenazi also had a low rate of intermarriage with other Europeans.

The combination of low gene inflow, career limitations, and differential reproduction set up the necessary conditions for natural selection of intelligence between 800-1700 AD.

Natural selection in Europe explains the high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews compared to other Jews and compared to the rest of the world.

It also explains the anomalous rate of genetic disorders: positive selection for genes that improve IQ balances out the decreased fitness from disease. The genetic data suggests that the fitness advantage of intelligence for Ashkenazi Jews may have been on the order of 2% per IQ point.

Testing the Hypothesis

It is possible to test the genetic claims. Ashkenazi who are carriers for the alleles mentioned but who are not sick—often those with only one copy of the allele instead of two—are predicted to have better averages on intelligence tests than non-carriers. The control group would be any of their siblings who are not carriers. Since the alleles have a 1/2th chance of being passed on when one parent is a carrier, families like this should not be hard to find.

* * *

What I Think About This Research

If testing bears out the prediction that being a carrier boosts IQ, it means that individual genes and mechanisms that raise intelligence have been discovered and identified.

And that not everybody has them.

In some ways, this is a good thing. Exceptional people make the world a better place.

We will miss the extra-numerous Ashkenazi genius when it is no longer here: The conditions that caused natural selection for intelligence in the Ashkenazi are gone, and in some cases reversed. Today, they are probably regressing back to the mean. This may make the rest of us more equal, but in the end it is a tragedy.

It may not be an inevitable tragedy though. This paper is some of the first research to link specific genes to intelligence, and we can be confident of more like it in the future. Identifying the genes that cause genius will one day allow us to replicate that pharmaceutically: we will be able to boost IQ with a pill.

Facing some unpleasant truths about human differences now may wind up being the best way to improve things for everyone in the end.

--
* Alleles for sphingolipid storage disorders (Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick, and mucolipidosis type IV), DNA repair disorders (BRCA1, BRCA2, Fanconi's anemia type C, and Bloom syndrome), Canavan disease, familial dysautonomia, Factor XI deficiency (Peretz et al., 1997), the I1307K allele of the APC locus (Gryfe et al., 1999), non-classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

Sponsors

Voxel dot net
o Managed Hosting
o VoxCAST Content Delivery
o Raw Infrastructure

Login

Poll
I think that...
o 1. Race does not exist. 12%
o 2. IQ has nothing to do with intelligence. 10%
o 3. Both 1 & 2. 13%
o 4. Race and IQ are valid concepts, but all races are equally intelligent. 3%
o 5. Race and IQ are valid concepts, and there are only environmental differences in intelligence between races. 10%
o 6. Race and IQ are valid concepts, and there are genetic differences in intelligence between races. 50%

Votes: 88
Results | Other Polls

Related Links
o Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence
o The Economist
o The New York Times
o *
o Also by Thrasymachus

Display: Sort:
The Genetic Origin of Ashkenazi Genius | 475 comments (440 topical, 35 editorial, 51 hidden)
Nazi Jews? (1.50 / 10) (#3)
by LilDebbie on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 09:21:36 PM EST

Ponfused.

My name is LilDebbie and I have a garden.
- hugin -
Visual thinking (2.00 / 9) (#8)
by Back Spaced on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 10:35:56 PM EST

The Ashkenazi score 12-15 IQ points above the European average on intelligence tests, or in other words 0.75-1.0 standard deviations. They have high verbal and mathematical scores, but have visuospatial scores about 0.5 standard deviations lower than the European mean.

Interestingly enough, with both Einstein and Feyneman described their methods of thinking through mathematical problems, both used visual/spacial techniques.

Bluto: My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
Otter: Better listen to him, Flounder. He's pre-med.

My IQ is higher than Feynman's (1.50 / 14) (#13)
by MichaelCrawford on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 11:26:04 PM EST

I recall reading somewhere that Feynman took an IQ test once. The result indicated that while he was an intelligent guy, he wasn't unusually so. He would have barely qualified for MENSA.

I don't think it's just me who has a higher IQ, I'm pretty sure there are many Kurons who do. Yet few of us have won Nobel Prizes.


--

Live your fucking life. Sue someone on the Internet. Write a fucking music player. Like the great man Michael David Crawford has shown us all: Hard work, a strong will to stalk, and a few fries short of a happy meal goes a long way. -- bride of spidy

-1 Dangerous (1.20 / 15) (#14)
by scatbubba on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 11:31:34 PM EST

If a race can be superior due to genetics, then a race can be inferior due to genetics. Talk of inferior races leads to gas chambers. Humanity should pretend that these facts don't exist.

All nature, no nurture? (2.73 / 15) (#19)
by ktakki on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 12:26:09 AM EST

I'm not going to attempt to refute the conclusions of this study, but I will comment on cultural influences that might have led to this intelligence differential.

First, literacy was encouraged among Ashkenazim, since post-Temple Judaism was centered around the Law (Torah, Mishnah, Gemara), a structure too complex for oral transmission. Compare this with pre-Reformation Europe, when Scripture was only available in Latin and accessible only to clergy and select laity.

Related to this is the ability to speak multiple languages. A European Jew would have to know the language of his host country, along with Hebrew (for reading the Torah), and most likely Yiddish (a German dialect spoken by Eastern and Central European Jews).

Second, since most European countries prohibited Jews from owning land, the Jewish population of Europe was largely urban (exceptions include agrarian settlements in Poland and in the Pale of Settlement in Russia). Life in an urban area would expose one to many different national and cultural influences, as opposed to the isolation of a rural area.

Finally, as an apocryphal datapoint, there is a traditional cultural affinity for learning and knowledge, one that has been institutionalized and ritualized. As an Ashkenazi Jew beginning my studies towards my bar mitzvah at age 11, my mother gave me a spoonful of honey when I received the first textbook from our rabbi. It was a symbolic act, meant to associate learning with the sweet taste of the honey, and a family tradition for generations.

In a broader sense, in just about every Jewish community I've lived in (New York, Massachusetts, California, etc.), scholarship is paramount, even in suburbs where you'd expect popularity or athleticism to be of greater value. The only culture I've known to rival this are the members of the Chinese and Vietnamese diaspora in America, who hold scholarly achievement in a similar light.

I think that if we start to see a bump in the number of Chinese- and Vietnamese-Americans earning Nobel Prizes in the next few decades, we'll see that it might be nurture and not nature that's the cause.


k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank

Why do we ignore the things that happen everyday? (2.46 / 15) (#22)
by cburke on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 12:34:06 AM EST

So, the hypothesis is that this particular tribe of Jews was forced into "intellectual" jobs like money lending did a better job of surviving due to racism, which resulted in a genetic preference towards intelligence.

You know, I always wonder why people forget that 900 years is always a long time only in human conception, and forget that those human years are more important than genetics.  Why do we forget the ideas passed down from parents to children, in favor of the genetic?  We are human beings, and our ability to pass on non-genetic information is why we've gone from making fire to making microprocessors in less than twenty thousand years.

Could it be that racism forced those Ashkenazi Jews who survived using these indespensible financial jobs did a good job of teaching their trade to their children?  Could it be that they taught their children to survive, rather than granting them the ability through their reproductive cells?

I mean, they've found amazing connections between identical twins raised in different households...  yet at the same time said twins were distinctly different.  Genetics is meaningful, but over a course of just a few hundred years?  I'm going to have to give the nod to culture, the social hereditary trait.  

But to be honest, I tend to be sceptical of any claim of a genetic basis for a social stereotype.   We still aren't very different than the homo sapien of twenty thousand years ago, genetically.  Our cultures have been evolving and waging wars against each other for all that time.  I have a hard time believing that genetics is the cause of our social orders when those orders keep changing from region to region from age to age.  Give me a claim that genetics says that some racial group doesn't belong at their current socio-economic level, and has been stereotyped or oppressed or even privileged, and I might be more likely to think it isn't a veneer of dodgy "intellegence" testing and arbitrary statistical choices layed over our well known social biases in order to prove those biases don't exist.  

As it is, "natural selection breeds tribe of Jews with the Accountant Gene" sounds dodgy as hell.

Don't overlook culture. (2.22 / 9) (#25)
by Kasreyn on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 01:20:57 AM EST

In the 20th century, they made up 3% of the U.S. Population, but won 27% of U.S. Nobel prizes.

Don't you think it's jumping the gun a bit to immediately assume this difference must be due to innate intelligence? Jewish culture also plays a large role, as it historically has done a much better job encouraging its young people to pursue careers in science (and, it might be hypothesized, rewarding those who do). How do supporters of the "Jew IQ" theory plan to measure and factor out the effect of Jewish culture on these statistics?

As a quick editorial, your last paragraph feels tacked-on and has little to do with the subject matter of your story body. It opens a whole can of worms on whether IQ enhancement is even possible, and unless you take the time to actually cover the topic more broadly, I suggest removing the fragment and staying on-topic.


"Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgement Day:
We never asked to be born in the first place."
R.I.P. Kurt. You will be missed.
I feel like an idiot. (1.75 / 8) (#27)
by Kasreyn on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 01:27:23 AM EST

And not just because ktakki said what I said sooner and better, but because I missed an even more fundamental point: who is handing out Nobel Prizes, and how can we be certain they don't just have a pro-Jewish bias? Aren't the people who hand out Nobel Prizes mostly from "central and northern Europe"? Surely we should factor out issues like third-party bias before we go using Nobel winning rates as an indicator of anything. Does anyone have any data or links they could post to inform me?


"Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgement Day:
We never asked to be born in the first place."
R.I.P. Kurt. You will be missed.
I like to go by my web IQ rather than (2.00 / 4) (#30)
by Sesquipundalian on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 02:11:54 AM EST

my more legitimate school tested IQ. By the term web IQ I am refering to the average score you get taking the free online IQ tests on web sites. I know they aren't the same as real IQ tests, I consider them to be a seperate measure of intelligence alltogether. They have a certain stabillity though; everyone I know who will take one of the tests (selected at random off of yahoo or google or whatever) always scores within +- 8 points or so of what they usually get. That's pretty tight considering that the average is by definition 100 and most of the test scores go up to at least 180.

I try to take a different one each week. I notice that my scores drop 10 to 15 points when I'm sick or tired (it's a bit like lifting weights, you can tell which questions are on the edge of being solvable by you with a certain ammount of effort or whatever, you have days when you suck and days when you kick ass). Drunk or otherwise always sets me back 30 points or so. I am trying to work out the correlation between my web IQ and my real one, a philosophical quest that I am sure will supply me with a lifetime of navel gazing rapture.

Heh ~ my faves are the questions where you know what they mean because you saw a similar question last week, but they screwed up the grammar or something so noone else can possibly understand the question except you and maybe five other people (because you happened to take the test that the current test designers were copying from, when you tested last week, or something...), that stuff is just a howl.


Did you know that gullible is not actually an english word?
RTFA (2.31 / 16) (#35)
by bugmaster on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 04:11:11 AM EST

I've actually read the original article, and I even understood some of it (I'm not a biologist, so it's difficult for me, but still).

Firstly, the article states a well-founded hypothesis, and makes several predictions that should come true if the hypothesis holds. I am assuming that the authors are studying the data right now, and that we will know relatively soon whether they were right or not.

Secondly, the authors make a very plausible case. Ashkenasi Jews exhibit some unusually high concentrations of several genes which are a). very harmful (i.e., they lead to genetic diseases), and b). potentially linked to intelligence on the biological level. These genes are not related to each other, except in these two factors. Since the socioeconomic factors acting on the Askenazi Jews has always pressured them to increase intelligence, it stands to reason that the abnormal gene distribution that theye exhibit does indeed account for their intelligence.

Yes, it's discomforting to think that some people may be biologically predetermined to be smarter than others. But, when you think about it, it kind of makes sense. There's certainly a great degree of variation among human phenotypes on a purely cosmetic level: Black (er, African-American) people are, well, black; Asian people have narrow eyes; Swedes are uber-white, etc. It stands to reason that similar variations would exist on other levels, as well. In fact, I've read an article somewhere (sorry, I don't have the source) that Kenyans are genetically predisposed to function better anaerobically than Europeans, which makes them better marathon runners.

Those of you who are thinking, "but, if we believe that some races are dumber than others, we're bound to engage in ethnic cleansing !" are missing the point. Just because some bit of knowledge is uncomfortable, doesn't mean that it's false. Closing your ears and singing "la la la !" is no substitute for actually knowing how our bodies (and minds) are put together.
>|<*:=

Good paper (1.33 / 3) (#42)
by Nyarlathotep on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 07:47:23 AM EST

Its seems to be a diligent paper.  Yes, pharmaceutical applications are a good idea, but I doubt you'll see the full benifits unless you have it throughout your life.  So we'd be much better off genetically modifying our children.  Its easy to make sure your child has only one allele if having two creates dangerous side efffects.  We can also adjust the genes to cause less damage, but still boost intelleegence.  For example, It might help to have the gene be active throughout childhood but shutdown later in life.  Moreover, simply understanding the intellegence boosting effects of these genes would permit parents to intellegently pick and choose.

On a seperate matter, we must also change the social dynamics which incurage the poor to have more kids, as this just increases social divisions.  BTW, its not bad for the gene pool if the poor have more kids, as genetic natural selction will never act upon humans again, i.e. everyone will be seriously genetically modified in 100 years.  It might be bad for the meme pool if the pool have more kids, but its not obvious.  Here are some speciffic suggestions:

1)  Eliminate need based support for parents with bad memes, have society provide the memes these kids see.
Examples:  Eliminate the tax & direct payment welfare benifits for having children.  Instead provide "while you work" child care for everyone.  Also provide optional extended school hours, and "need based" boarding schools.  Kids can get all three meals at school & daycare while parents work (more healthy BTW).  

2)  Provide merit based livestyle flexibility.
Example:  Create free 24-7 child care for the 30%ish of single parents who "contribute the most to society" (doctors, scientists, academics, lawyers doing mucho probono work, freee software authors, etc.) and top 30%ish of students.  Productive parents would be free to spend as much or as little time with their kids as they wanted.  
Our goals should be:  (a) a higly produtive woman can have a kid at 20 without doing serious damage to here carrear, even if it involves 5 years of grad/med school.  not doing damage means she should be able to produce as much with the kid as without, meaning society has taken burden upon itself.  (b) create a selective pressure to be more useful to society.
Campus Crusade for Cthulhu -- it found me!

racist bullshit (1.14 / 21) (#59)
by circletimessquare on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 10:26:27 AM EST

die you racist fuck

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
The Educational Deficit (1.88 / 9) (#64)
by MichaelCrawford on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 12:12:17 PM EST

I was told by my shrink a few months ago that the "educational deficit", that is, the difference in IQ between raised in an enriched environment and being raised in an unstimulating one, is twenty points. That's a pretty significant difference.

I think it's no accident that you see kids who grew up in homes where education was prized going to college more than those who grew up where it wasn't.

There are cultures that traditionally prize education and intellectual achievement, and there are cultures that don't. In order to demonstrate whether a race's difference in IQ is due to nature or nurture, I think you'd have to do your IQ tests before they enter school, and even then you'd see some difference because of how they were treated as toddlers.


--

Live your fucking life. Sue someone on the Internet. Write a fucking music player. Like the great man Michael David Crawford has shown us all: Hard work, a strong will to stalk, and a few fries short of a happy meal goes a long way. -- bride of spidy

Negroes? (1.69 / 13) (#65)
by What Good Is A 150K Salary When Living In NYC on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 12:24:58 PM EST

Yes, but what does this have at all to do with negroes and their role in society, as a generalisation of course?


Skulls, Bullets, and Gold
Riddle me this Batman (2.16 / 12) (#72)
by MichaelCrawford on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 01:34:59 PM EST

I won't take a position on whether or not I agree with this story. But I ask those who disagree with it whether they believe in evolution and natural selection, and if so, why is it that there are demonstrable racial differences in height, weight and skin color, but to claim there are in intelligence makes one somehow a racist?

There are easily demonstrable differences in intelligence between humans as a whole and other species. If this arose through the process of natural selection, can you explain to me how it stopped when we achieved human intelligence?


--

Live your fucking life. Sue someone on the Internet. Write a fucking music player. Like the great man Michael David Crawford has shown us all: Hard work, a strong will to stalk, and a few fries short of a happy meal goes a long way. -- bride of spidy

Interesting First Half of Article (1.33 / 3) (#78)
by Gruntathon on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 02:23:52 PM EST

But I dont like your historical selection argument.

I appreciate that you might want to keep it simple, but I am really just not feeling the genetic imperative so important here.

You dont even touch upon how these smart genes got into the Ashkenazi.
__________
If they hadn't been such quality beasts (despite being so young) it would have been a nightmare - good self-starting, capable hands are your finest friend. -- Anonymous CEO
Ashkenazi Jews and genetic diseases (1.80 / 5) (#83)
by alby on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 04:15:16 PM EST

It's worth that noting that Ashkenazi Jews are more susceptible to a whole variety of diseases, especially Tay-Sachs.

--
Alby

This is all well and good... (2.27 / 11) (#85)
by Back Spaced on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 04:59:08 PM EST

But, in your discussion of Nobel Prize Laureates, you fail to mention that women are dramatically under-represented, especially in physics and chemistry (if you consider that Marie Curie won both, the number of female winners in both catagories drops to five), and none since 1964.

Women are also under-represented in all other catagories. Yet I don't see you offering this up as evidence that men are genetically more intelligent than women. What makes you think, then, that you can do such a thing for Ashkenazi Jews? Your dismissal of cultural differences as being critical, when they are obivously what defines the male/female disproportion amounts only to so much handwaving.

Second, the IQ test as a measure of "intelligence" has been highly criticized, and not without reason. I am skeptical of its utility as an absolute measure, and you give me no reason to change my mind.

Given that both of the foundations of your argument are shaky (especially the first), I cannot take you seriously, in spite of your tendancy to drop name-drop genetic diseases.

Bluto: My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
Otter: Better listen to him, Flounder. He's pre-med.

ALL HAIL THRASYMACHUS, KING OF RACISTS (1.11 / 51) (#100)
by I HATE TROLLS on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 11:34:53 PM EST

 ____________________________________________________________________________
|$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$|
|$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$|
|$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$|
|$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$|
|$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$|
|$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$|
|$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$|
|$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$                                            $$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$ MMHMHMHMHHHHMMMMFjMM@@NkNM@NNNHHHHHHHWHHHH $$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$ MMHMHMMMHHMM5dMMBJM@@@NNM@@@@@@NHHHHHHHHHH $$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$ MMMMMMMMM#8.MMMU!JTMMMMMMMMM@@@@MNHHHWHHHH $$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$|
|$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$ MMMMMMMMMdk+Y?!`    .``????7YTM@@@NHHWHHHH $$$$\ \$$/  \$$$|
|$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$ MMMMMMMMWFv'      ...    .` ``.`W@@NHHHHHH $$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$|
|$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$ MMMMMHHMJ``       ```...``.````+!?MNHHHHHH $/\$$$\  /$$\ \$|
|$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$ HHHMHHHM:`.         .` .``` ``?++`dNHHHHHH $\ \$$/  \$$$\/$|
|$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$ HHHHHHHM1?     .....++.........?++MNHHHHHH $$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$|
|$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$ HMMHHHMNZi   .`?TTTMM#1?zMMMM8VSz!MMHHHHHH $$$\  /$$\ \$$$$|
|$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$ HHHHMM#4T?.  .=!?9.TdF.`zOWdM$Bb++#THHHHHH $$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$ MHHMMMrM:`   `  .++v?  ++!1v+.??++:8dHHHHH $$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$ MMMMMMMJ.F `  ..`?`.   `++``++`++z`jMHHHHH $$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$ MMHMMMMN.?`   `` ..J'  +j++```+++v.dHHMHHH $$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ MMMMMMMMb .     .`dN.Na#NN?+..++j:.MMHHHHH $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$ MMMMMMMMMM$     ` `1HMMNMM$.++++jmMMMHHHHH $$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$ MMMMMMMMMHr   ` ` .JCdMMME.,++++dMMMMMHHHH $$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$ MMMMMMMMHW    . .?=`.JwOz+++1+zdMMMMMMMHHH $$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$ HMMMMMMBwd,   `.`?.?+VTC+++++zuMHMMMMMHHHH $$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$|
|$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$ HMMMHWXWXkde   `.`  . ,+..++zQHMMHMHHHHHHH $$$$\ \$$/  \$$$|
|$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$ MHqHbWkXWWWWL    ...jQAwzzxZ.NHHHHHMHHHHHH $$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$|
|$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$ WMMM#XWWWWHHHN,  ..TMNM9Cv! .MHHHHHHHHHHHH $/\$$$\  /$$\ \$|
|$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$ M@@@MyWHHHMHNHN,      .J    dHHHHHHHHHHHHH $\ \$$/  \$$$\/$|
|$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$ @@@@@#MMMMMMMMMM,    JMMt  .NHHHHHHHHHHHHH $$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$|
|$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$ M@@@@#MMMMMMM@MMMp  JHM@d. JHNHHHHHHHHHHHH $$$\  /$$\ \$$$$|
|$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$ @@@@@NMMMMMMMMM@MMb.MNMN,| JMMMNNHHHHHHHHH $$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$ M@@@@#MMMMMMMM@@@@@MdMMMM| .NMMMMMNMHHHHHH $$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$ M@M@@NMMNNMMM@@MM@@@@@@@Nr  MM@@MMMMNNHHHH $$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$                                            $$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$$$$$$$/\$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$|
|$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$$$$/ /$$$/\$$$$|
|$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$$$$\ \$$/  \$$$|
|$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$|
|$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$/\$$$\  /$$\ \$|
|$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$\ \$$/  \$$$\/$|
|$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$$\ \/ /\ \$$$$$|
|$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$$$\  /$$\ \$$$$|
|$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$$$$\/$$$/ /$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$$$$$$$/ /$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$$$$$$$\/$$$$$$$|
|$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$|

Correlation does not imply causation (2.54 / 11) (#102)
by it certainly is on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 11:58:02 PM EST

Firstly, the Ashkenazim and Jews in general are not a race. They are an ethnic group.

A significant proportion of Ashkenazi Jews either deliberately limit themselves to dating only other Ashkenazi Jews, or have family that prevent them selecting non-Ashkenazi as partners. Where this discrimination is carried out, it is done to try and protect centuries-old Jewish culture - their greatest fear is "the Silent Holocaust" of assimilation and intermarriage with non-Jews.

It is this ethnic protectionism that causes the dwindling gene pool and the associated genetic diseases.

There is a very small genetically inherited trait that contributes towards intelligence in Ashkenazim, fostered by centuries of culturally woven natural selection, which the paper outlines. However, this is greatly outclassed by the "memetic" inheritence, or cultural influence. Ashkenazi children grow up in a community which gives high regard to intelligence. The strong community is the common cause of both the genetic disease and the high IQs.

For further reading, see the Wikipedia bunfight on the topic.

kur0shin.org -- it certainly is

Godwin's law [...] is impossible to violate except with an infinitely long thread that doesn't mention nazis.

before reading the comments (1.75 / 4) (#110)
by fleece on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 02:23:06 AM EST

I knew this would be a hot topic, with debates between PC types who would say it's racist to suggest that some races are smarter than others, and other people trying to logically explain why it isn't and getting nowhere. Whatever the ratios are for nature vs nurture, why do so many people have such a hard time believing that intelligence could vary between races due to natural selection?



I feel like some drunken crazed lunatic trying to outguess a cat ~ Louis Winthorpe III
intelligence does not make exceptional (2.40 / 5) (#120)
by boxed on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 05:57:14 AM EST

Mensa was founded on the intelligence=>exceptional idea, but as we all know mensa is just a big circlejerk and has accomplished nothing dispite having collected some of the highest IQ-ranking people in the world by far. In short, this is interesting, and all but in life and science success is not measured in IQ, but by your attitude to the problems at hand.

Also this recent article; East Asians smart too (1.40 / 5) (#133)
by jongleur on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 01:17:11 PM EST

I thought this recent article would make more of a splash:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/cdri-bai042505.php.

What's interesting to me is, what the pressures were for East Asians (I presume that means Japanese). I speculate that it was population density - nothing enriches an environment cognitively than other smart beings. I read that all other things being equal, that social monkeys / apes are smarter than solitary ones, and Japan is notoriously crowded. Of course that's only glancing speculation.

I have had the fancy that the further from Africa races went, the more evolved they'd be - the pressures met along the way would winnow out the unsuitable traits of each locale, while the vicissitudes and strife would keep the travellers' population small & evolvable. Partly inspired by Asians seeming more advanced; smaller & more hairless. But of course this would mean that South American Indians were the most advanced of all, which I don't think is jumping out of any study. But it was a fancy, not a careful enough application of evolution anyway.
--
"If you can't imagine a better way let silence bury you" - Midnight Oil

Something I have always found fascinating (2.10 / 10) (#139)
by parrillada on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 05:43:34 PM EST

is the apparently genetically selected-for trait of neuroticism in the Jewish population. I know it is not a very PC suggestion, but just about anyone who grew up in a Jewish family (including myself) can attest to the prevalence of genetically-driven neuroticism in Jews.

The reason I think this is relevant to the article is that it provides more support for the "Historical Selection for Intelligence" section, because it seems like a pretty huge coincidence that Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years and that they have a genetically selected-for fear-complex.

In an environment or racial persecution, neuroticism and intelligence are obvious traits to be selected for.

Statistical Significance (1.62 / 8) (#147)
by student on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 06:51:21 PM EST

Most people do not consider a result "significant" if it is less than two standards of deviation from the mean.  A result 1 standard of deviation above the mean occurs at random 16% of the time - if you have 7 ethnic groups, most likely one of them will be 1 SD above the mean by chance.

Thank you for posting your standard of deviation information.  Many more statistics could be debunked if the popular media shared sigma as well as mu.

¤¤¤¤¤¤
Simon's Rock College of Bard, a college for younger scholars.

Missing the Point (2.50 / 10) (#151)
by bobej on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 07:15:59 PM EST

I think there is certainly something to be gained from looking at the genetic differences in this cultural/racial group that contribute to increased intelligence, but to think that it is some kind of genetic panacea is assinine.
  1. "anti-Semitism locked the Ashkenazi Jews into intelligence-demanding careers like money-lending, tax-farming, and the merchant trade"... huh? I didn't get that from the paper at all, though they mention BOTH things being contributing factors. Anyways, I'd think anti-semitism would lock them into the shit jobs.
  2. Any paper that tries to quantify and use historical factors is just plain shady. There's no way a physicist would calculate something based on anecdotal or incomplete information like we have from the 9th Century. You can use it to make a hypothesis, but you can't use it to test a hypothesis.
  3. To think that a dozen or even 100 different genes could be manipulated to give higher intelligence is just a little bit naive.
  4. The social and physical factors influencing intelligence are innumerable and extremely intertwined. Perhaps the Ashkenazi just have particularly good vision, which leads to an enhanced ability to learn. The problem with a study like this is that it is impossible to identify and test all these possible factors. A genetic study of intelligence would be much better off just finding a bunch of really smart people and start comparing genomes, regardless of ethnicity.
  5. To say that we SHOULD increase the intelligence of our species as a whole is a little suspect. How much will IQ pills cost? Who will get them? Is high IQ necessarily a good thing? What if empathy is more important to a well functioning society than IQ? I'm not saying we should just sit on our fat dumb asses, but such questions need to seriously be considered.

The race of the subjects of the study are irrelevent. The study itself is suspect in my opinion. Nothing wrong with the topic, but this study seems incomplete.

So (1.80 / 5) (#157)
by Big Sexxy Joe on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 07:35:39 PM EST

That mean that the Ashkenazi Jews are truly the Master Race?  Were the Nazis just jealous?

I'm like Jesus, only better.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free grassroots news hour
seems to me... (1.66 / 9) (#167)
by mikelist on Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 10:22:46 PM EST

...that above average intelligence isn't the deciding factor for success, but it looks like a minimum IQ IS. I don't have a figure for that minimum score, but success rates for African descended Americans suggests that a slightly higher value than 85 is close. US blacks are not all ghetto rats or crack dealer/user types, anecdotal evidence (my experience) suggests that attitudes are a better predictor of success, which is a fairly subjective term anyway. I know and have worked with very intelligent and very obtuse people of white, black, and latino (Spanish/American Indian)derivation, and often the obtuse ones, especially whites, are as or more 'successful'than their more intelligent counterparts. There was some buzz about a GQ that involved long term rather than immediate gratification as a predictor of success (which would include stable personal and working relationships), but I haven't seen it recently. I'm interested in the dynamics of attitudes that could be considered racist, and am convinced that racism (basing conclusions about individuals of a given race on statistical data about that racial group overall) isn't completely off-base, only the conclusions reached by those who would advance racism as a primary social factor. I have an above average IQ (143-155, depending on the test)but am only moderately successful (stable personal relationships, consistently working at mid-tech jobs, mixed success of offspring, somewhat frequent economic hardships), whereas many obvious intellectually well endowed individuals seem to have a higher success rate (stable and consistently advancing jobs, stable relationships, and sufficient savings to avoid economic hardship). I do however, wake up every day with a positive attitude and enjoy my job(s) which could be considered another reasonable definition of success. I have a brother who consistently puzzled IQ testers with scores hovering around 200, he appears to be developmentally handicapped to casual observers, and is only minimally successful, using the parameters I have described. He also enjoys life, and has many friends, who nonetheless consider him 'retarded'. Low IQ scores for a group are much less meaningful than some would like to believe, presuming that those scores are above a set point that I would suggest is slightly above 85.

Interesting... (1.16 / 12) (#169)
by PhillipW on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 12:22:38 AM EST

...but it says nothing of the Jew's inclination toward being a money grubbing polluter of Aryan blood. I think if we can scientifically link race to intelligence, perhaps now we can link race to evil.

Your work is almost done, mein fuhrer!

-Phil
IQ tests are a sham. (1.28 / 7) (#173)
by Tezcatlipoca on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 01:26:18 AM EST

IQ tests do not measure intelligence. They measure the ability of a person to pass a test. A test that is biased culturally.

If you apply a test, any test, to a big group of people, there is one to be bound to perform better.

What convinces me this is all sham science are the lame explanations given for the alleged superior intelligence of this particular group.

So racism foced this people into intelligence enhancing activities? And can we expect that a few hundreds years of genetic isolation would make up to contrarrest a million years or more of human evolution?

Pure nonsense. This "scientists" should get -1 for their conclussions. And anybody still trying to measure intelligence on this day and age should get -10.

Might is right
Freedom? Which freedom?

Scaning intelligence (2.12 / 8) (#194)
by Norwegian Blue on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 08:27:41 AM EST

- 'Intelligent' is used along a spectrum, from a fairly technical 'scanning speed property' which intelligence tests try to measure ,
to a pure value judgement in the order of "good thinking" (as in "obviously this person is not TRUELY intelligent"). I'll stick to the technical version. The other one is merely funny.

- Intelligence is part genetic and part environment. A part of it can be taught.

- a fairly good job has been done to lessen impact of culture on the intelligence tests.

- Intelligence is like horsepower for a car. It's valuable, but don't get any ideas. Learn to drive. If you're a lousy driver, you might be able to spin your wheels in an impressive way, but mostly you're a danger on the road. Unfortunately, a lot of people do get ideas. This is made possible in part because a lot of other people are impressed by those nice spins. Related to this, weak ideas are often attributed to weak intelligence. In my judgement, this diagnosis is very often false.

- studies about genetic differences between groups of people can show statistically significant or outright significant differences.

- Statistically significant means "only statistically , not otherwise significant. Nothing to see here, please move on".  Of course people always stop to watch.

- Outright significant could become an indirect factor when hiring someone. That means, when you have nothing else to go with.

 - It's like hiring A's cousin because A is smart.

 - Reportedly, the distribution of intelligence for women is more narrow than for men. There are proportionally much more extremely stupid men and extremely smart men then there are extremely stupid/smart women.

 - Better check directly who your candidate is. If you have to rely on gender to figure out which programmer to hire, you need a better system for hiring people.

- Racial/ethnical differences in intelligence are a very loaded issue.
A statistically significant difference can be used to support claims about superiority of people,
by intelligent people who shouldn't be allowed to drive.
That means that claims about statistically significant differences between people will be attacked on being false claims. If successful, this at least is one less argument to use in schoolyard bullying. Somehow, I consider this funny. But don't listen to me. I also thought my subject title was cuter if I left the spelling error in.

Boosting intelligence can have some value, especially on the low end of the spectrum. But it's a secondary aim. Intelligence is valuable but overestimated. Learn to drive.

it's so sad this made front page (1.06 / 16) (#195)
by circletimessquare on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 08:58:45 AM EST

you would think that the lessons of the wars and social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries would educate us as to the failures of racist thinking, and here we are, in 2005, on a website of "technology and culture," and this kind of racist shit rears it's head and makes front page

ever wonder how madness like world war ii could ever happen?

look into yourself if you voted for this story, and see the seeds of that same madness

racists, know thyself

what a damned shame, all of you racist assholes still out there, like retarded creationists and those who believe in a flat earth, dragging the HUMAN race down

just a damn sad shame, how long it takes fucking stupid ways of thinking of the world to die

just die you fucking racist dinosaurs, just fucking die already


The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Define Ashkenazi \nt (1.42 / 7) (#196)
by bob6 on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 09:15:41 AM EST



Cheers.
I must say i am rather skeptical... (2.16 / 6) (#198)
by spooky wookie on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 09:37:31 AM EST

To this type of science. I HATE TROLLS probably had the most insightfull comment yet.

People scoring high IQ's exist everywhere accros ethnic groups and so called races. If the authors wanted to research why some people score higher in IQ tests than others there are certainly enough test subjects inter racially, to determine if there is some kind of common factor involved.

And in all seriousness, this is alot more dangerous than most people aparently think. To the general public this will be reduced to:

1) All blacks are dumber than everyone else.

2) All Jews are smarter and a threat to everyone else.

We all love generalisations dont we?

should the pale skinned wear sunscreen? (1.56 / 16) (#207)
by circletimessquare on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 11:02:29 AM EST

of course

in australia, a bunch of colonists from the murky british isles dropped on a brightly sunlit desert has meant soaring skin cancer cases

am i saying pale people shouldn't wear sunscreen because that would be racist?

of course not

that would result in thousands of needless deaths in australia alone ever year

less melanin means you should protect yourself from the sun in other ways

duh

and...

what is this supposed to mean to me?

what great lessons is supposed to be drawn from this?

geographic variations in biochemistry exist

so what?

what does it mean?

it doesn't have ANY SIGNIFICANCE WHATSOEVER

because race simply doesn't matter

there are many medical conditions which can be shown to be confined historically by geography

sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, lactose intolerance, HIV immunity, rhabdomyelosis vulnerability when on statin drugs, tay-sachs disease, chilblains, vulnerability to gout, etc., ad nauseum

just like nose size (arid or humid conditions), finger length (hot or cold), and skin color (melanin protection from sun), etc., ad nauseum

did you know that on the average, worldwide, men are about 10% darker than females because for females protection from the sun is less important than the critical need for folic acid during early pregnancy, and that can come from the sun?

what does this all mean?

nothing!

not a fucking thing!

JUST LIKE THIS FUCKING RACIST STORY

it's little scientific tidbits that don't add up to a whole

all of these little different surface features and biochemical quirks all overlap with each other

you can't draw any lines in the sand that signifies anything meaningful, because all these little quirks you add up have different geographical ranges

it's simply genetic white noise, and it's a quiet signal

meanwhile there is a strong solid tone that is a lot louder: the similarities

so how come the static of surface differences matter so much to some, when if you mapped them they would barely pierce the thick volume of similarities?

to focus on these surface statistical perturbations is like someone looking at ripples on the surface of the lake

and completely missing the volume of water in the lake underneath

this is the logical fallacy of racism: ripples on the surface have lessons for us about the volume of water underneath

;-P

race is a concept that is silly shallow antiquated nonsense, for if you really truly understood what you were talking about when you bring up medical quirks and statistical anomalies, if you truly had some wisdom behind your words, then the vast volume of medical knowledge and statistics would speak to you of the similarities more than differences, by orders of magnitude

so what the fuck is this article supposed to mean?

tell us how ripples on the surface of a lake means something

tell us racists, tell us the deep significance

tell me about sickle cell anemia... what is the lesson for us? what great significance are we supposed to attach to this?

this article is nothing more than a window into the filthy soul of racism, and the fallacies in the reasoning of racists that they overlook to make the evidence fit their presupposed ideas about how much we differ

when we the real lesson of all medicine and biochemistry is how similar we are

focusing on the ripples on the surface, versus the volume of water underneath

the fallacy of the "logic" of racism


The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Natural Algernon (2.22 / 9) (#209)
by jabber on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 11:18:02 AM EST

Some years back, a fellow by the name of Eliezer Yudkowsky proposed something he termed "Algernon's Law". The name is a reference to the book "Flowers for Algernon", and the law states that any simple enhancement to the human mind results in a net evolutionary disadvantage. Put more simply, if making headway was that easy, nature would have done it long ago.

Yudkowsy's site no longer carries his lengthy thesis on this subject, but Google might reward someone determined enough to do some digging. In his analysis, Yudkowsky suggests that several "conditions" we see today may very well be natural Algernons - special adaptations and mutations which give individuals certain advantages, but render them less able to pass on such an advantage. Autism and dyslexia are his examples of the down-side of the numerical and spacial imagination upsides.

This research seems to have brought up another natural Algernon, which due to cultural constraints has been refined and passed down genetically, but with the disadvantages in tow.

[TINK5C] |"Is K5 my kapusta intellectual teddy bear?"| "Yes"

Somewhat unrelated (1.33 / 3) (#221)
by rianjs on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 01:33:38 PM EST

I clicked the link because of another bit about Ashkenazi jews, specifically how Myriad Genetics has patented a gene that only affects those women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.

So basically on the one hand it sucks that you're an Ashekenazi Jew, and on the other hand you're probably smarter than most other people.

Heh. That strikes me as funny.


onthepharm.net
Plausible but obviously requires more research (2.00 / 6) (#224)
by porkchop_d_clown on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 02:19:03 PM EST

to confirm the effect.

It reminds me of a study from a few years back that claimed that the children of engineering couples (i.e., both parents were engineers) were significantly more likely to be autistic, implying a connection between the genes for spatial and mathematical skills and autism. I don't remember seeing if that study ever went anywhere, however.

How many trolls could a true troll troll if a true troll could troll trolls?

ok, what's IQ then? (1.28 / 7) (#259)
by squirlhntr on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 07:17:43 PM EST

Yeah.

Look. So they took this algorithm, converted it into a number, and correlated it to genetics. Even if that was 100%, SO FUCKING WHAT?

Who says IQ means anything? Yeah, exactly. No one knows. If no one knows, then no amount of mathematical masturbation can get you laid.

Fact of the matter is, you can come up with these correlations with anything. You can correlate past sock prices to the amount of rain in Thailand. But like that tells you anything.

Without showing that IQ means anything, this is a worthless stupid fucking thing and its an embarassment that some dumb fucks in their moms basement got this into the front page cause they think they found the holy grail or something.

#1 lesson of science and math: what you can't measure, doesn't exist. Until you show you can measure intelligence, then, well, saying intelligence means anything just makes you a grade A asshole.

Nice troll (2.20 / 10) (#262)
by stuaart on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 07:59:45 PM EST

Seriously. The formula on display here is thus:

Race + Jews + Science + Intelligence =

  1. Accusations of racism;
  2. Questioning the relevance of IQ;
  3. Talk about African Americans;
  4. ...
 ) ...
n) Endless, pointless, inconclusive debate.

I say again, nice troll. Let's face it. The fact is that IQ tests are horrendously poor measures, however there are seemingly many famous, clever, Jews about. Lots of Ashkenazi Jews with big heads and important jobs.

Like I said to Baldrson once, though, this is a myth, made up, perpetuated and rejuvenated by various conflicting stakeholders:

  1. Anti-Semites;
  2. Jews Who Don't Know Better;
  3. People who believe the claims of either of the above.
There are more, but you get the idea.

Let's end once and for all this incredibly dull debate, one which concentrates upon the unnecessary, largely meaningless claims about Jews. Let's move onto the point the author here makes about the question of `natural' selection impacting intelligence.

If we are to believe this `research,' then ironically perhaps we should start to persecute the Jews again, eh? What an obvious conclusion.

Linkwhore: [Hidden stories.] Baldrtainment: Corporate concubines and Baldrson: An Introspective
Baldrson! (1.60 / 5) (#279)
by wji on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 05:12:40 AM EST

Long time no see!

In conclusion, the Powerpuff Girls are a reactionary, pseudo-feminist enterprise.
Interesting (1.80 / 5) (#294)
by johnpatrick on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 10:27:56 AM EST

i can not be more agree
Just feel the musik.-
Race != Genetics (2.44 / 9) (#296)
by mengel on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 11:02:14 AM EST

The poll seems to confuse two very separate issues:
  1. Does genetics influence intelligence?
  2. Does "Race" (as commonly understood) reflect genetics?
Personally I think the former is certainly correct, and the latter is horribly confused.

Most perceptions of race currently in effect in the world are based largely on skin/hair color, to the exclusion of all else. One could as easily use attached/detached earlobes, the ability to curl the tongue into a tube, or other easily identifiable genetic traits which clearly span groups of differing skin color...

And of course, genetics only gives you a higher possibility of something; you may have the genes to be 2 meters tall, but without enough calcium in your diet, you won't get there. You might have the genes to be able to develop mentally to do well on the SAT's, but without suitable mental stimulation and learning, you won't get there either...

So in summary, I do think genetics has a lot to do with the potential for intelligence; but I disagree that that has anything to do with what most people call "race". (OTOH, "species" seems to do pretty well, I don't expect many gorillas or chimpanzees entering Havard any time soon.)

Genetic Intelligence Booster Pill Unlikely (2.00 / 3) (#319)
by drclausen on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 04:15:03 PM EST

It is unlikely that genetic intelligence will be boosted in pill form. Most intelligence that is coded in the genes turns up in the developement of the brain early on in life. There are specific genetic sequences that code for protiens that influence the way our brains form. Variations in these genes cause variations in the way brains form and can result in variations in intelligence. Often, however, protiens that are used in brain developement are also employed in other parts of the body and so variations that cause increased intelligence can have the unintended side efffects that result in the diseases mentioned in the article. The problem with the idea of using a pill to change the genes that "code for intelligence" is that they have already done most of their work by the time a person could use a pill. There is a growing market of cognitive enhancers that increase abilities to concentrate (caffine, adderal, etc) but these do not change the structure of the brain, only how it can perform. It is more likely that genetically modifing intelligence will happen immediately after conception by altering the genes of the newly fertalized egg. While this is a promising area of reasearch, it is likely that we will run into the same problem nature did when selecting for intelligence. The protiens coded for in the genome of a human are used in so many places that it is unlikely that we will be able to snip a few genes here and add a few there and only modify intelligence, there will be other side effects as well.

Of course there are racial differences. (1.20 / 5) (#360)
by Anonymous Hiro on Wed Aug 03, 2005 at 09:08:33 AM EST

Whilst the difference in humans aren't as marked as breed differences in dogs, there are differences (some dog breeds tend to have smarter individuals than others).

Also, even if the average representatives of the various races/breeds are about the same in intelligence, the percentage of exceptional representatives may be different. One breed/race could have more exceptionals on both ends (stupid and smart) keeping the average about the same - the "bell curve" is wider for one than the other.

Given that, don't forget it's not usually the average individual who makes the difference in many many areas - science, art etc. It's often the exceptional ones that do - whether in intelligence, creativity or other attribute.

I think this may also be true for the differences between the sexes. There appears to be fewer exceptional females than males. Would be happy to be proven wrong. Maybe the exceptional females are busy doing exceptional stuff that doesn't appear in history, news or whatever?

Several Problems (1.87 / 8) (#379)
by czolgosz on Wed Aug 03, 2005 at 01:09:12 PM EST

1. IQ testing is a very reproducible measure of acculturation to a modern Western society. The article assumes that it measures something (intelligence), and that this measure is invariant over hundreds of years.

2. Assume that there is such a thing as IQ and it's inherited. The speculation that there is a causal relationship between inherited genetic disorders and the higher IQ of Ashkenazim would still be unfounded unless some causal mechanism could be proved. If Ashkenazy Jews are more intelligent, it is no more likely that being a heterozygous recessive for some lethal genetic disorder is the cause than to explain the lower IQ scores of African-Americans by claiming that the gene for melanin makes them stupid. There's likely to be something more complex going on there, and the wide disparity of environmental factors might matter a lot more.

3. Higher frequency of genetic disorders is not necessarily evidence of selective pressure for the genes for those disorders. It can equally well be nothing but evidence of the reduced genetic diversity of a population, and the heterozygous recessives are selectively neutral. Many populations that have been through a population bottleneck exhibit high rates of certain genetic anomalies.

4. This is a quibble: it was amusing to see Bobby Fischer cited as one of those "clever Ashkenazim" since only one of his parents is Jewish. To compound the irony, he's also a ranting antisemitic conspiracy theorist.

5. There is little or no meaning to the term "ethnic group" other than "an arbitrarily-chosen group of individuals with some vague historic or geographic connection." For example, "African-American" is a label applied in the US to people who have some ancestors from any of dozens of different societies who originated in Africa. This completely undermines any attempt to posit simplistic genetic explanations for differences in populations.

6. I'd like to see some meaningful statistics that infer rates of out-marriage (more correctly, reproduction outside the group) for different "ethnic groups" based on the genetic variability of the groups (keeping in mind the proviso that using that term reifies what is really an arbitrary category).

7. Part of the reason (6) matters is that, even if all the other methodological problems are explained away, other causal mechanisms might have a similar result. It may well be that vulnerable populations whose women were raped by Cossacks do better in IQ tests than others, for some obscure reason such as hybrid vigor or the fact that Cossack officers were on the whole smarter and got first choice of which women to assault. This is a brutal example, but the point is that, even if the phenomenon exists, there is no reason that the most obvious explanation for it is the correct one.


Why should I let the toad work squat on my life? --Larkin
Natural Selection? No way! (1.50 / 2) (#404)
by docjonez on Thu Aug 04, 2005 at 07:41:46 AM EST

The man says it was intelligent design.

So what this distills down to is... (3.00 / 4) (#415)
by Back Spaced on Thu Aug 04, 2005 at 04:52:52 PM EST

What the poster seems to be saying is this:
1) Ashkinazi Jews (AJs) are more intelligent, statistically, than non-AJs as evidenced by: a) Winning Nobel Prizes b) IQ tests c) an increased incidence of alleles that promote intelligence 2) Intelligence has a genetic component 3) The genetic component accounts for differences in intelligence between AJs and non-AJs 4) This is because of genetic selection that occurred during the middle ages in Europe.

I take clear issue with 1)a) in that intelligence is not the best correlator with winning a Nobel prize. Being selected by the Nobel comittee is. There are large access barriers to winning a Nobel prize that have nothing to do with intelligence. A girl born to farmers in Zambia, for example, has no realistic chance of winning a Nobel prize, in spite of what her intelligence may be. A backround of being born in a country that subsidizes scientific research is essential, as is being born into a culture within than nation that values scientific work. Just like the children of doctors are more likely to be doctors, the children of scientists are more likely to be scientists. It helps to have money as well, since being sent to a nice university where cutting edge research is being done by top faculty gives one an obvious boost.

So, if you're going to win a Nobel prize, it helps to live in a first world country, come from a family that values science and education and had a little money.

Well, guess where the Jews in the US came from? They were disproportionately the upper intellectual and financial class Jews of Europe that came here fleeing persecution at home (Einstein, anyone?). The Jews that were tailors and shoemakers were largely kept out my anti-semitic immigration laws, and a great many died in the 1940s.

So, Jews in the US came from a background that is disproportionately moneyed an intellectual, both cultural factors that would have a profound effect on winning Nobel prizes. It's quite a confounder, but this class-selecting effect of immigration laws is completely ignored in your assertion, as are any factors that might influence winning a Nobel prize other than intelligence.

In short, Nobel prizes are a bad example.

Insofar as 1)b) is concerned, the IQ test was developed initially as a means of identifying children with educational difficulties that might need special attention. In terms of measuring superior performance, the test is much more controversial, and the IQ tests most commonly administered in public schools as part of mass screenings are meant to locate underperformers for remedial education, not overperformers, and are not best utilized as such.

1)c) I am not aware of any functionally significant contribution to intellgence by the disease alleles you mention. I was not able to located papers on pubmed discussing such correlations using the mesh terms for each of the diseases and their alleles cross-matched with intelligence. All 16 papers produced focused on the intelligence limitations of homozygotes. The paper by Gryfe, et al. discusses the possible need for screening for APC genes in AJs, not the relation of those genes to intelligence. Looking for the reference to Peretz, et al., I found one that had a Peretz H. in the authors list with the following conclusions in the abstract:
These findings suggest that the Gaucher, connexin 26, and familial Mediterranean fever mutations are over 2000 yr old, that the cystic fibrosis 3849 + 10kb C->T and factor XI type III mutations had a common origin in Ashkenazi and Roman Jews, and that other mutations prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews are of more recent origin.
It therefore becomes harder to conclude, as your paper later does, that at least these genes arose as intelligence adaptations during the middle ages, although some must have arisen during that time.
The Peretz paper you site concerning Factor XI deficiency does not mention a role in intelligence, the title of the paper being "The two common mutations causing factor XI deficiency in Jews stem from distinct founders: one of ancient Middle Eastern origin and another of more recent European origin."
If you have an argument for point 3), then, you have only a circumstantial one and cannot point to specific intelligence alleles, or rule out a cultural basis, at least not with the information that you provide here.
Point 4) is controversial, as a few hundred years is too small a time period for evolutionary pressure to change a human population as large as the AJs, and you dismiss the founder effect rather carelessly.

Bluto: My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
Otter: Better listen to him, Flounder. He's pre-med.

So answer me this... (2.50 / 2) (#437)
by nrsingadeva on Sun Aug 07, 2005 at 06:12:31 AM EST

If intelligence isn't primarily determined by genetic factors, how can natural selection ever have selected 'for' intelligence?

Selection can only act on genes, ergo intelligence must have a genetic basis?

junk science (2.75 / 4) (#455)
by jcarnelian on Wed Aug 10, 2005 at 10:51:03 AM EST

"If testing bears out the prediction that being a carrier boosts IQ, it means that individual genes and mechanisms that raise intelligence have been discovered and identified."

Intelligence clearly has a hereditary component. But this particular paper has lots of problems.  Two major ones are the following.

First, just because a particular mutation is associated with increased academic achievement does not mean that it has a beneficial effect on the brain.  Academic achievement and intelligence are measures that arise out of a complex interaction of genetics and environment.  A mutation that lowers athletic ability slightly without affecting the brain at all might, for example, result in increased academic achievement for children in the US.

Second, talking about this in terms of ethnicity is unfounded.  While the gene may be associated with a particular ethnicity, there is no indication that the effects are in any way related to ethnicity.  That is, the same mutation in a Japanese, Eskimo, or Bantu would likely have the same effect.  The statistical association between this mutation and the Ashkenazi ethnic group is a historical accident (unlike, say, the association between being Germanic and having a higher risk of skin cancer).  And for the author to focus on ethnicity rather than specific family histories puts his research, his motives, and his understanding of genetics in question.

I've been saying this for years (2.50 / 2) (#460)
by alevin on Wed Aug 10, 2005 at 02:16:11 PM EST

Only thing is my stupidity and mental disorder(s) constitute a thick layer of dysfunctionality obscuring my transcendental intelligence allowing it to surface only on rare occasions.
--
alevin
The Genetic Origin of Ashkenazi Genius | 475 comments (440 topical, 35 editorial, 51 hidden)
Display: Sort:

kuro5hin.org

[XML]
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. The Rest © 2000 - Present Kuro5hin.org Inc.
See our legalese page for copyright policies. Please also read our Privacy Policy.
Kuro5hin.org is powered by Free Software, including Apache, Perl, and Linux, The Scoop Engine that runs this site is freely available, under the terms of the GPL.
Need some help? Email help@kuro5hin.org.
My heart's the long stairs.

Powered by Scoop create account | help/FAQ | mission | links | search | IRC | YOU choose the stories!