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A comment on How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”?. Parent comment

Re:How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”? by philwelch on Friday December 04, 2009 @06:34PM (#977439)
As much as I like the "Ashkenazi Jews are a genetically smarter population" hypothesis, it's not sufficient to explain what's going on. It's probably necessary that some level of intelligence exists within a population for startups to happen, but it's probably a vanishingly small part of the equation.
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Re:How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”? by rkts on Friday December 04, 2009 @10:04PM (#977675)
The combination of IQ and "chutzpah" is the essence of the entrepreneurial personality. If Jews are (for whatever reason) disposed to be high on these traits, it's certainly a sufficient explanation.
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Re:How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”? by Zarathu on Friday December 04, 2009 @09:44PM (#977649)
Not only does it not explain why there are so many Israeli startups, but it's a false hypothesis altogether. Aside from the fact that IQ is more a representation of adaptation to modernity than intelligence, there are many environmental factors that come into play.

There would probably be more startups in the Arab population if they weren't so discriminated against in the country.

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Re:How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”? by Fljotavik on Saturday December 05, 2009 @12:18AM (#977779)
That is possible. On the other hand, you don't really see too many start ups in nations where the Arab population makes up the majority either, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, etc.
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Re:How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”? by Zarathu on Saturday December 05, 2009 @03:28AM (#977900)
(Oh, I should let you know that Iranians are NOT Arab, contrary to popular belief. They're Persians.)
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Re:How Did Israel Become the “Start-Up Nation”? by Zarathu on Saturday December 05, 2009 @01:00AM (#977816)
In Lebanon, there are tons of startups. That's because the Arab population isn't oppressed by their own government the way they are in Saudi Arabia (women being executed for witchcraft and so forth).

I can't believe someone down-voted my previous comment. Is it now anti-Semitic to say that the Jews aren't genetically superior to everyone else?

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