I don’t comment on the “Jewish are smarter” comment but I always attribute their success to their culture and work “mind”.

Sort of similar to how “Asian parents push their children to become doctors.” It’s not necessarily that Asians are smarter, but they do work hard to achieve what they want… statistically speaking.

Jewish do indeed account for a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes, among other things. At the very least, that seems to indicate that intellectual prowess is highly regarded inside the Jewish community and, as such, strongly encouraged as kids grow up. It's possible that the Jewish culture itself may provide members with a sense of structure and discipline that other cultures perhaps lack (at least on average).

Kindling this kind of provocative discussions should not be permitted here. The argument that x is smarter than everyone else without ever this being able to be verified is ridiculous. I don't suppose that a kid in Nigeria has the same access to education, resources, foreign aid, easy visa and an immense network as the average kid in Israel.

Of course, that is an extreme. But assigning intelligence to a "gene" and excluding any kind of environmental or societal/cultural reason for this kind of outlier is not very "smart"

> Kindling this kind of provocative discussions should not be permitted here

I simply and in good faith answered jonplackett's question based on my personal opinion and observations. My intention was not to provoke, although I do realise that this is a sensitive topic for some.

> But assigning intelligence to a "gene" and excluding any kind of environmental or societal/cultural reason for this kind of outlier is not very "smart"

Certainly, I do not believe that genetics is the only factor that affects intelligence. That being said, in the same spirit, I think that excluding genetics as a potential factor just because it makes some feel uncomfortable is not very smart.

Its a dangerous path - saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber. That sort of dialogue is completely taboo at least in the US.

What about Obama's American exceptionalism speech? Seemed to be accepted fine.

Myths can be powerful things. Doesn't necessarily make them true.

Do you really not know the difference between nationality and race? There are people of every race and creed in the US.

I do actually, but in this context it doesn't really matter. Does any - not first generation immigrant - say I am 10% Irish, 10% Jewish from Russian Empire, 50% Welsh and 30% Italian? Maybe some people do but in reality you say you are an American. And for most of the world that's how it sounds anyway.

The problem is, because some misguided prejudiced people made up the bogus concept of "race" and used it to justify various forms of discrimination, we're no longer allowed to criticize the very real concept of "culture."

The people with the greatest influence over our language have succeeded in merging the two concepts, walling them both off from polite discourse for reasons known only to themselves.

Taboos are a way to hinder progress and science. I will not fall into that trap.

I could be wrong ofc, but I was under the impression that it is widely accepted in the scientific community that intelligence is at least partially affected by genes.

> saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber

Note: I said on average.

The issue is not the average, but the extremes. When you have two identical distribution curves but one's center is shifted, the effect on the ends of the distributions are exaggerated.

A standard deviation increase in the average leads to a huge difference in demographics at the extremes. The population with lower mean will have the majority of the lower tail of the distribution, and the the other population will dominate the upper tail. In the highest 1% they will appear enormously over-represented.

In the middle is where it matters least, because near average people for both populations might have very similar iqs.

For a paper on the issue of specifically ashkenazi (rather than 'jewish') IQ I recommend this one from the University of Utah:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi...

Note the increased IQ is specifically for askenazi jews, as opposed to say sephardic jews. The paper identifies historical social issues that would make selection for intelligence a strong factor in ashkenazi history, explores possible genetic causes identified through unique mutations not present in adjacent populations, and goes into depth on IQ and IQ heritability.

A high level summary available from the economist behind a paywall but viewable here:

https://outline.com/XnhPWd

I hope you find it interesting. I think its scientific enough that few people should find it controversial, except those who believe that IQ is not a useful measurement of intelligence, which I don't think is an opinion you share given your previous posts.

The controversial part would be Jordan B Peterson talking about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQHH6o9ual8

No matter your feelings on him, worth a watch.

Also in my experience (mainly business) I experimented that Jewish people are much smarter than the average non Jewish business people I've been dealing with. At best I could get a draw, never a business win. (I don't mean anything bad or implying anything more than what I've written. Please read my comment in a positive way).