November 21, 2007

More on the Race-IQ brouhaha

Here's Will Saletan's third and last article at Slate. He advocates genetic engineering to equalize the races. I've always been skeptical about whether we have the wisdom to handle such power, and have been pleased that it appears to be farther off than I had assumed back in the 1990s. As I wrote in VDARE.com in 2005:

Through genetic selection and modification, we will soon be able to transform human nature, for better . . . or worse.

Some find this exciting. I find it mostly alarming.

The good news: we still have time to figure out what the physical, psychological, and social impacts of these gene-altering technologies might be - by studying naturally-occurring human genetic diversity.

The bad news: we won't fund research into existing human biodiversity - because it's politically incorrect.

Noah Millman responds to Saletan in detail at American Scene in The Sound of a Dam Breaking, with comments from John Derbyshire and Will Wilkinson.

At Cato Unbound, social scientist Eric Turkheimer writes:

“When the theoretical questions are properly understood, proponents of race science, while entitled to their freedom of inquiry and expression, deserve the vigorous disapprobation they often receive.”

Which raises the question, if Eric Turkheimer were ever to discover anything that would support race science realism, he would do what with it, burn it? Couch it in such high-flown philosophical language that you wouldn’t be able to figure out what he meant? Publish it while vigorously disapprobating himself?

Hasn’t he just wrecked his credibility as an objective scientist? Shouldn’t he be ashamed of that, rather than proud of it?

Turkheimer goes on:

“Why Race Science is Objectionable

“If I may address my fellow Jews for a moment, consider this. How would you feel about a line of research into the question of whether Jews have a genetic tendency to be more concerned with money than other groups?”

My observation over the last couple of decades has been, going back to Gould's Mismeasure of Man and Kamin, Lewontin, and Rose's Not In our Genes, that while most of the talk is about the white-black IQ gap, among those who take the lead in demonizing realists, most of their angst, anger, and underlying agendas are actually driven by concerns that the masses will learn about the Jewish-gentile IQ gap, which would cause them to pick up their torches and pitchforks and stage pogroms across America.

It's the kind of triple bankshot reasoning that intellectuals take seriously -- If James Watson is not allowed to mention race and IQ, then the process of discovering that Jews tend to be smarter than gentiles can't get underway! -- not realizing that 90% of the people who have never heard of James Watson roughly understand the reality already (e.g., listen to what arrested mafioso and rap stars say about which kind of lawyer they want).

Of course, quite a few of those demonized, such as Richard J. Herrnstein of The Bell Curve, are Jewish, too.

I'm reminded on one of the dozen general lessons Jacques Barzun has learned from a lifetime of study:

"An age ... is unified by one or to pressing needs, not by the proposed remedies, which are many and thus divide."

As Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine pointed out in The Jewish Century in 2004, much of Western intellectual life since, say, The Communist Manifesto in 1848 has been driven by the pressing needs felt by a successful but vulnerable high IQ minority, and by the often-clashing remedies their many thinkers have proposed: e.g., Marxism, Freudianism, Randism, Boasism, Frankfurtism, Neoconism, Friedmanism, etc.

And progress was made -- Milton Friedman's theories were good for the Jews and the human race as a whole, at least compared to Karl Marx's. The early neocons did a lot of good work in the domestic social science arena and in foreign policy.

But you can't understand the world around you without paying attention to group differences in IQ, since they drive so much of what we see.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

76 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saletan wrote one troubling thing:

5. Intermarriage is closing the gap. To the extent that IQ differences are genetic, the surest way to eliminate them is to reunite the human genome. This is already happening, including in my own family. In 1970, 1 percent of U.S. marriages were between blacks and nonblacks. By 1990, it was 4.5 percent. It may be the best punch line of the IQ debate: The more genetic the racial gap is, the faster we can obliterate it.

Well, yeah, but the (scientifically predicted and observed) result of mixing is averaging. For whites and East Asians, that's averaging down.

Virtually all human progress proceeds from people with higher IQ's. To ask for averaging- down is to ask humanity to shoot itself in the foot.

Is Saletan the kind of left- wing fanatic who would make everyone equal in height by chopping off feet, or equal in living conditions by burning down houses, or equal in IQ by lobotomizing the clever?

Saletan suggests that genetic engineering may help raise IQ's. That sounds like a much better idea to me than breeding for mediocrity.

Anonymous said...

Ashkenazi Jews really missed the boat on evolutionary biology and genetics in the 20th C. Think of how well represented they are in physics, chemistry, math, computer science -- and psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and other human sciences.

So, this isn't a matter of Jews not preferring the less abstract fields of study like biology. You can abstractify any object of inquiry. And it's not because biology is so heavily visual and spatial -- math and physics more so than biology!

Lewontin is about the only big name that comes to mind, maybe some other lesser figures (not Gould, though!). But nothing like physics or psychology. When the hysteria on genetics eventually dies down, the Jews of that time will all be smacking their foreheads, wondering what the holy hell their ancestors were thinking.

Anonymous said...

“When the theoretical questions are properly understood, proponents of race science...

What exactly is a 'proponent of race science'?

It's a real plus that guys like Turkheimer are around to make sure we 'properly understand' these things.

eh

TabooTruth said...

I think genetic engineering is perfectly fine. Anyway, artificial intelligence will explode soon so it may make this entire discussion moot.

But Bravo to Millman for illustrating the complex ethical issues surrounding this that we are finally able to discuss.

Luke Lea said...

Snorrebrod worries about averaging down. That raises an interesting question I've been wanting to ask for some time:

If the average goes down but the total size of the population goes up, would or would we not have the same number of highly talented individuals?

In other words, if all those smart Jewish genes got mixed into the general Gentile population, would it necessarily lead to a decline in the total sum of intellectual achievement?

Would those same genes in their new home produce more good, less good, or about the same amount of good, in so far as the general welfare of society is concerned?

What about the number of super high IQ individuals, as opposed to the number of just really high IQ individuals?

I'd like to hear from someone who is conversant with the math of this problem in population genetics.

Anonymous said...

"...most of angst, anger, and underlying agendas are due to the Jewish-Gentile IQ gap."


Come on, Steve, you don't really believe this, do you? I had a harder time coping with the lower average IQ for Africa than I did with genius Jews. In fact, there would be more an issue if Caucasians were at the top of the IQ heap.

I hate to admit I was wrong but on your race-IQ expose, I was dead wrong (Note, this does not mean I'm relinquishing the right to disagree with you on anything else & still harbor some resentment over insults incurred in past discussions). You hit a nerve with the open discussion of race differences regarding IQ which is odd because other differences are completely acceptable topics of conversation. I was shocked by the intensity of my own negative response because as a Caucasian I'm in a group that fares pretty well in discussions of IQ. Also, I haven't been able to use my ability to score well on standardized tests or even exams that are prerequisties to get certain jobs in order to cash in on the advantages I supposedly have as someone with a slightly above average IQ. So I should've had a more measured response. I can only ponder the reasons I'm still harboring some latent PC indoctrination from my early 20's.

Anyway, the discussion is obviously building momentum. I'm impressed both with the quality of the articles written by the likes of Saletan and Millman and with the silliness of some of the PC hedging. I'm not too keen on the idea of doing some sort of genetic engineering to enhance IQs either. The main reason is because I believe people really do have other abilities not related to those on IQ tests and that they can use these to create a niche for themselves in the economy. I'm also very leery of having people with IQs above 70 but below 100 viewed as disabled.

I'm sorry I misjudged you, Steve. I can see now how you were leading up to making it possible for people to acknowledge the reality of racial IQ differences. It's important. As in the Millman article, I think one of the first things we need to do based on IQ realism is redesign school curriculum or at least go back to tracking students without apology. I hope this goes mainstream. It could save a lot of money and heartache to educate people according to their ability rather than based on some idealistic view that we all deserve to be doctors and lawyers.

Anonymous said...

Anyway, the discussion is obviously building momentum.

You reckon? What may seem like waves are only really a few small ripples in the blogosphere.

As for some pending panacea of genetically modified enhanced intelligence, I'm not just sceptical, I'm frankly dismissive.

Anonymous said...

My observation over the last 25 years has been, going back to Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man, that while most of the talk is about the white-black IQ gap, among those who take the lead in demonizing realists, most of angst, anger, and underlying agendas are due to the Jewish-Gentile IQ gap.

Steve,

The above is the most ill-formed sentence that you've ever written.

I'm having difficulty parsing it grammatically.

The subject seems to be "those who take the lead in demonizing realists", but there's that "among those" which sort of muddies the waters.

Then we have the "angst, anger and agendas" - the triple A of "those".

Finally, something - maybe the angst? - is due to the "Jewish-Gentile IQ gap".

Pardon my denseness, but what's being said here?

Is is that gentile scientists, with their lower IQs, are demonizing realists? That seems unlikely.

Is it that the "Jewish Gentile IQ gap" is controversial? That is flatly untrue. Murray and Cochran talk about it publicly and are not subject to a global two minute hate. Indeed, didn't one of those fine gentleman attribue superior IQ in Ashkenazim to the fact of their Divine Election by the Creator of the Universe?

It's rare to see such an uncontroversial mention of the LORD in the biological sciences these days. I was quite impressed.

In fact, seeing as how the "Jewish Gentile IQ" gap is both common knowledge and uncontroversial, the way in which it is causing "angst, anger and agendas" "among those who are demonizing realists" quite defies understanding. Maybe you could tell us how it is causing this all this anger when it is uncontroversial that Jews have higher IQs than Whites? Nobody I know - and I know a lot of intolerant liberals, let me tell you - would take umbrage with the existence of that "gap". I hardly think it is Jews who are shy about being so bright. Indeeed, you may consult any volume authored by a Jew, turn to a random page, and mention of either divine election or superior intelligence or both, won't be more than a few paragraphs away.

So if the gentiles don't care about this "gap" and the Jews don't care about public discussion of this "gap", then where is all the anger and demonization coming from?

I think maybe you should say some more about who is angry and why they are angry. Tell us who is suffering from this angst, and what occasions it.

Finally, an "agenda" indicates goals and a planner, or group of planners. Who is planning here? What are the goals? What is this agenda?

Now, the truth is because I am telepathic, and because I left my tin foil hat at work, I know exactly who you meant to refer to in the sentence reprinted above. And, I know what their agenda is and why they are so wracked with anxiety. However, seeing as how this is your blog and not mine, I leave it to you to decide if you'd like to unpack your hard earned quarter century of insights, or if you'd rather leave it to the small percentage of readers who have the secret decoder ring, included as a free gift with every copy of MacDonald's "Culture of Critque".

You do fine work, Steve, and no one is more grateful for the work you do than I am. Still, if you mean to say something you should come out and say it. Conversely, if it is too early to say, you should observe a wise silence. Hiding your message way down deep beneath syntactical barriers is, in itself, a message, one that I'm not sure you want to send out.

That message is: be afraid.

Or, don't mention Them.

That attitude - the superstitious one - is the most poisonous and harmful of all.

Anonymous said...

Ashkenazi Jews really missed the boat on evolutionary biology and genetics in the 20th C.

They didn't miss the boat. They've been trying to sink the boat. In other words, their boat is a different boat altogether: They've done a wonderful job of suppressing the facts in the field of genetics.

When the hysteria on genetics eventually dies down, the Jews of that time will all be smacking their foreheads, wondering what the holy hell their ancestors were thinking.

No, you are being naive. The Jews of that time will be on same page as the Jews of this time. They will ask the question "is it good for the Jews?"

Anonymous said...

"..idealistic view that we all deserve to be doctors and lawyers": there's no need to share Mr Sailor's views on race to see that adult discussion of life really can't happen if people insist on discussions that involve "deserve".

Anonymous said...

FYI Steve,

Matthew Yglesias has at last deigned to comment on the Saletan three-parter.

See also Megan/Jane Galt's post where she struggles to answer a Vietnamese woman's question about why crime is so high in D.C. without mentioning the unmentionable.

Anonymous said...

"Well, yeah, but the (scientifically predicted and observed) result of mixing is averaging. For whites and East Asians, that's averaging down."

Not really. Like Murray and Herrnstein said in the Bell Curve, smart people are marrying other smart people (and ethnic boundaries are disappearing quicker among the educated elite than among the rest of the country). The real result will be that you'll have slantier eyes and bigger noses among our upper and upper-middle classes in 100 years, and the boys and girls at the Mayo Clinic will have a slightly harder time diagnosing jaundice in their clientele.

Actually, if you don't get factionalism, diversity's not bad. It makes transplanting organs harder, but you get fewer genetic diseases.

Anonymous said...

Turkheimer is a moron. I'm sorry, but the fellow's post is a complete joke. I expect ignorant commentators at Slate and the NYT blog to argue that people like Watson don't know as much about race and IQ as they themselves can derive from the essential axioms of PC, but it becomes absolutely intolerable when the same is expressed by somebody like Turkheimer.

I will close with a word on Watson. He is not really a racial scientist to any significant degree, he just expressed a point of view that I think is false and destructive. No one deserves to be punished for expressing a point of view, but there is another consideration here. Watson is a legitimately respected and famous person on the basis of his great scientific accomplishments and the awards they have won for him, but those accomplishments don’t have very much to do with racial differences in intelligence, except that both domains involve the concept of “genes” in a very general way. It is safe to say that he does not know anything more about the subject than anyone writing here. He is, of course, still entitled to his opinion, but famous scientists and intellectuals have some responsibility not to use their fame in the service of dangerous ideas that are ultimately outside their real expertise.

I guess you're entitled to your ill-informed opinion, Mr. Turkheimer, but I wish you would stop spreading this dangerous, expensive, and unproven notion of inherent cognitive equality among races.

Anonymous said...

Genetic engineering of kids for increased IQ is a ways off. However, if this racial realism/human biodiversity stuff is real (and I think it is), then technological solutions such as genetic engineering offer the only positive-sum solution to dealing with these issues. Positive-sum solutions are always preferable to zero-sum solutions.

Anonymous said...

Genetic engineering may be a ways off, but developing intelligence-enhancing drugs based off discoveries in genetics won't be nearly so far off.

Anonymous said...

Lame conclusion to a good series. He wussed out on the policy implications, and made false claims to downplay the significance and put a positive spin on things. But I guess he still wants to get invited to cocktail parties.

Anonymous said...

That was an absolutely terrible concluding piece. Just awful.

On points #1 and 2: Yes, yes, can't judge individuals by their group membership---thanks for the Stats 101 refresher Bill. Of course no mention of affirmative action or other anti-white/Asian racist policies that try to equalize aggregate outcomes based on group membership, despite the unequal potential of those groups. Public policies, by the way Bill, that punish the individual based on their group membership, regardless of individual merit.

Point #3 is little more than Jewish gloating. But as an English-Japanese hybrid with a high IQ, I've been guilty of a bit of gloating myself, so I'll give him a pass :)

His 4th point is just plain silly. People don't go about their lives as Star Trek Vulcans, coldly quantifying every judgement. Stereotypes/statistical observations are useful because they just plain work---yes, one will err, but more often than not the initial judgement will be correct. And THAT'S what matters, not being petrified of committing an ecological fallacy.

#5 on his list is just plain pernicious:
"In 1970, 1 percent of U.S. marriages were between blacks and nonblacks. By 1990, it was 4.5 percent. It may be the best punch line of the IQ debate: The more genetic the racial gap is, the faster we can obliterate it."
In other words, one of his "solutions" is to lower the IQ of white women's babies by encouraging them to breed with black males (I'd venture to guess based on my personal observations that ~90% of the 4.5% white-black intermarriages he celebrates are between white women and black men). Freaking brilliant. That will benefit society.

There are admittedly some good suggestions in #6 and 7, though I'm not sure that "everyone agrees" that the black-white IQ gap has been closed over the course of the 20thC. On the contrary, the evidence that I've seen would seem to suggest that the ~1 SD gap has held fairly steady. I do agree that we should do what we can to improve environmental factors for all races---this has seemed to work for African Americans vis-a-vis Africans. I also agree with this statement: "If racial differences persist, is that really so awful?"

#8 is laughable. Even if his anecdote about African kids staying longer to check their answers is true, THEY STILL GOT THEM WRONG! And that's what matters! I was always among the first to finish my standardized tests in high school and college, but I always scored in the 90+ percentile. His point is utterly irrelevant. DOING THE JOB CORRECTLY is what matters, not how long it takes you to be incompetent.

#9 is just anti-factual. You can wish hereditary factors to go away, but they won't.

And his final point is just plain utopian. Genetic engineering will only WIDEN the racial IQ gap. How about some good ol' fashioned eugenics? Not saying that it's necessarily moral, but it would do a hell of a lot more to close the IQ gap than genetic engineering. Mass sterilization especially---think of it as fighting the Idiocratic tendencies of our current reproduction policies. Again, not saying it's moral, but neither is genetic engineering IMHO. At the very least, we can offer various sundry inducements for voluntary sterilization.

What a flatulent end to an otherwise promising series.

Anonymous said...

Any normal person reading "Intermarriage is closing the gap" will immediately react "not me or my kids thanks." I don't know how many normal people read Slate, though.

Anonymous said...

On intermarriage: Over time increased intermarriage and immigration will create a high IQ "race" consisting largely of East and South Asians, Jews, and gentile whites. Anyone with brains to be succesful will be welcomed in, and a few blacks and a moderate number of Hispanics will marry in.

Middle class whites will intermarry more with Hispanics than with Asians, and blacks will more often have kids with poor whites sans marriage. Inasmuch as the black/white dichotomy is based on recent ancestry it will fade, but the animosity will still be there.

Will a light-skinned, kinky-haired young man of African descent who makes no money and has a history of DUI, drug posession and domestic violence refrain from racializing his resentment just because his brawling, alcoholic grandfather shares the same race as our august president? He will notice that very few African-featured persons are in positions of power and that most powerful people have Jewish or Asian features. If anything dysfunctional poverty will become more black because, at least in urban metropolises, marginal whites and Hispanics will drift into the black underclass as smart hardworking ones exit and marry out. So I think that the black and non-black categories will persist and that those in the black category will on average have lower IQs than those in the non-black categories.

Eternally Anonymous

Anonymous said...

Genetic engineering will, of course, only EXPAND the gap between the Cognitive Elite and the Unintelligentsia, and anyone who pretends otherwise is, well, probably not a member of the former group.

Anonymous said...

The left wing will NEVER go for genetic engineering. They worship Mother Nature, and their motto is that you should never interfere with the Ways of Mother Nature.

Anonymous said...

In some ways genetic engineering is a little like plastic surgery. No one could criticize using the latter to correct disfiguring injuries or deformities, but but we have not shown much wisdom- as Steve says- in using it for the healthy. The fake noses, breasts and lips of Hollywood starlets make them all look like clones with nary interesting, unique face to be seen. Angelina Jolie is one of the very few people I've seen whose nose job is an improvement; unless you are truly unblessed in this regard you're better off keeping the nose you were born with.

If we have trouble reshaping the nose to give beauty and character, how can we hope to do so for the brain? I suspect that at least for the next century or so IQ enhancement will leave patients with one-size-fits-all minds that will kill blacks'legendary creativity and turn them into dull, acountant style nerds. Blacks will not want that for their children. Blacks will not embrace genetic engineering for their children if it renders them greatly at odds with black culture.

Even if generic engineering becomes palatable for blacks it will never reach the blacks that really need it: the children resulting from accidental pregnancies of single, uneducated black women. Either Saletan didn't think this through, or he was grasping at straws for an optimistic conclusion.

Eternally Anonymous

Anonymous said...

"Help a Heeb out."

MacDonald on Jews is like Chomsky on elites. Chomsky, like MacDonald, leaves certain key constructs undefined ("elite opinions" in the case of Chomsky, "ethnic interests" in the case of MacDonald). Neither Chomsky's "propaganda model" nor MacDonald's "group evolutionary strategy" theory produce testable predictions ~ex ante~. "Group evolutionary strategy", like the "propaganda model", is great for "analysis" after the fact. Before the fact, good luck.

In short, it's not science. It's a conspiracy theory packaged as science.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the whole thing is kind of a strange charade. Aristocrats of yore were open about their "superiority", whereas today dominant subgroups seem to have an obsession with hiding themselves.

Being open about Jewish intelligence and how it came about might be helpful for the rest of us in a practical way. Not necessarily in that we should blindly imitate the methods that brought it about, but perhaps we could gain some understanding of them and adapt them so that all of society could benefit from some Jewish practices without engendering the divisions that have caused tragedies with which we are all too familiar.

Personally, I think there are fundamental strengths and flaws in Judaism that contributed to making Jewish people what they are today. Same goes for Christianity. Isn't it possible that we could discuss the merits of both, and even other philosophies, to obtain an even better idea about how to order society to achieve progress in an uncertain future? Maybe it sounds heretical, but even the most orthodox of men, such as pope Benedict XVI, are open to discussion with those - like Habermas - who hold opposing beliefs.

Steve's persistent focus on psychometric science does serve an important purpose. These data comprise a tool that we can either use or shun out of taboo. If we use it wisely, it need not result in a reincarnation of the Third Reich, and if we refuse to use it we could set our progress back by hundreds of years. Although I'm not sure science will offer us any easy solutions, it is an excellent aid in philosophical efforts at the very least.

Those who would call themselves "progressives" can't avoid the label of hypocrite if they ignore real, scientifically obtained results. It is telling that they cannot rationally explain why they suppress data, but must resort to primal, atavistic, spectral horrors to explain their reluctance to acknowledge the truth. And these are the same folks who ridicule creationists! What a joke.

Anonymous said...

" Half Sigma said...

The left wing will NEVER go for genetic engineering. They worship Mother Nature, and their motto is that you should never interfere with the Ways of Mother Nature.

11/21/2007 8:27 PM"

But they are all for ignoring human nature. Hence their belief that 5 ft. tall women should be fire-fighters and riflemen.

Besides since when has what liberals said in any way proscribed what they (personally) do. They're all for integrating schools (your schools) and neighborhoods (your neighborhoods and diverse workplaces (your workplaces). But these things never apply to them, if they can afford it.

The good liberals of the future will endlessly kvetch in those insipid, hand-wringing op-ed pieces they write over how bad genetic engineering is. They'll all but denounce themselves for considering it, and they'll demonize anyone else for considering it. They'll say all that....and then they will do just as they do any other damn thing they want.

Markku said...

Genetic engineering may be a ways off, but developing intelligence-enhancing drugs based off discoveries in genetics won't be nearly so far off.

It's not way off as you might think. You seem not to have grasped the exponential nature of technological development. Every generation of powerful tools is used to develop a generation of even more powerful tools.

If you ask geneticists about the medium-term prospects of their fields, they are very likely to underestimate them because the development of the tools they use depends on dozens of OTHER fields they are unfamiliar with.

At any rate, I'm not sure whether it makes sense to genetically engineer smarter people during the next 2-4 decades. It's more likely to that we'll go for brain augmentation through non-biological technology instead. Imagine using (initially) microscopic bots to function as artificial neurons connected to biological neurons and each other. That way, people could tap into the miniaturization and other exponential trends in capacity increments of information technology directly to magnify their intelligence. Tinkering with genes is hopelessly slow compared to that.

Anonymous said...

Half, but they also want everyone competing on a level field. Which will win? I'm guessing level field.

And there is another way of closing the gap Saletan didn't mention.

Black women who chose to have out of wedlock children can chose very capable sperm donors. The government could even encourage it.

Anonymous said...

But you can't understand the world around you without paying attention to group differences in IQ, since they drive so much of what we see.

Group differences in ethnocentrism and respect for objective truth are highly important too. The two traits are inversely correlated: high on one, low on the other, and vice versa. "Truth is what is good for my group."

Anonymous said...

MacDonald's argument, with which I do not entirely disagree, is that intellectual Jews in positions of power such as Boas and Freud took positions that they thought would help their extended family avoid persecution and would decrease racial solidarity among the host peoples. Whether you think this is a bad thing or not depends on your politics, obviously; I don't really think maintaining Jim Crow was good for America, and as long as we're talking ethnic animosity, don't get me started on the Scotch-Irish who managed to mess up America AND Ireland, IMHO. Go back to Scotland and let the sons of Erin have their fourth green field back! And yeah, let's let the South secede. I'm serious. Once you guys have established a Christian republic on Earth we can have national healthcare and maybe do something about global warming. And no, you might get half the army but you do NOT get to keep MIT. You might try to build Georgia Tech up.

I'm not sure to what degree your average Jewish person believes this new science is dangerous (most of the people I've talked to seem mildly tickled by the idea), but humanities graduates of the Ivy League, who have imbibed Marx, Freud, Gould, and Durkheim, still believe it, and THEY staff the New York Times and various other intellectual positions of power.

Anonymous said...

What may seem like waves are only really a few small ripples in the blogosphere.

Ripples in the blogosphere go places. Much of the readership of the NY Times is now aware after Harmon's article (#3 most emailed at one point) that the internet generation is not responding to race and intelligence etc. the way Gould et al. would have predicted when they were butchering the sciences of human nature in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

This was probably inevitable, as the R&I data becoming freely available was a huge defeat for those who thought they could shut down the conversation.

Anonymous said...

“If I may address my fellow Jews for a moment, consider this. How would you feel about a line of research into the question of whether Jews have a genetic tendency to be more concerned with money than other groups?”

Why would anyone wish to know less about humankind and the world?

Unknown said...

So why did the late Richard Herrnstein talk about it? And why does Saletan? Why am I talking about, for that matter?

I could've SWORN I'd explained this to you (more than once?), but I'll try it again:

Direction does not equal destination.

That's not to say that all Jews agree even on destination - I'll leave that to your straw man.

Anonymous said...

"Actually, if you don't get factionalism, diversity's not bad. It makes transplanting organs harder, but you get fewer genetic diseases."

If you don't get factionalism... and if you don't get addicted to heroin or get HIV injecting it then I hear it's actually a pretty good trip.

With comments like this it is clear where we are heading as a society. A latin American model or middle eastern model - but more corrupt, more hypocritical and more factional. After-all latin america and the middle east with their histories of high-IQ interacial love are a model to follow for the rest of us. Their innovations in science, their commitment to social justice, their defeat of poverty, and their break-throughs in all intellectual endeavors remind us that diversity and diversity only will win in the end.

I find it amazing how people can be so careful about so many things like saving money or even crossing the street, but when it comes to a total social transformation through massive demographics shifts they merely say: let's roll the dice!

Now that's playing smart! Just like latin America.

Anonymous said...

Saletan is most interested in the NAM IQ shortfall and suggests intermarriage between blacks and (effectively, whites) will fix it. To the extent that such pairings are "assortative mating" for IQ they will still drive down overall average IQ because of reversion to the mean. Suppose a black has IQ 2 std. deviations above the (black) mean (~114) and marries a non-Druish white of similar IQ (only +1 std. deviation for the white). What's the predicted average IQ of their offspring? Hint: It's not 114. Second hint: It's not 100.

Saletan's interracial marriage can close the IQ gap, but only at the cost of driving down the (overall) IQ average. In other words, such marriages may be a good deal for NAM's but they are a bad deal for WAA's (on the average IQ front, of course; I don't mean to suggest that interracial marriage is always a bad deal for the participants, who consider many factors when choosing mates).

So you cannot redeem Saletan's point by suggesting that assortative matings of WAA's will raise black IQ, and you cannot redeem it by suggesting that pairings of NAM's with WAA's will raise average IQ even if those matings are assortative by IQ (at least in the short/medium term-- in the longer term it depends on natural selection).

Anonymous said...

Sure, HS, that's why the left is so fecund, all that nature worshipping.

TabooTruth said...

That's odd, though, considering their rejection of religion. Without God, Mother Nature is just randomness. Why not bring some control into it?

Advances in artificial intelligence will probably dwarf any increases we can make in human intelligence via genetic engineering.

Anonymous said...

"The left wing will NEVER go for genetic engineering. They worship Mother Nature, and their motto is that you should never interfere with the Ways of Mother Nature."

This is only relevant for America. The entire world will have no choice but to adopt genetic engineering once a country with the intellectual and economic capability (i.e. China or India) does so to produce more optimal humans.

Anonymous said...

It is sad to see as brilliant a psychologist a Turckheimer - I have profited very much from reading his scientific articles and I am not even a psychologist - to publish an article which a) missed the topic of the target article, which was not about race and b) did not contain a single sentence that made much sense.

It is true that pc makes you stupid. And I am not a conservative at all.

Anonymous said...

"Indeeed, you may consult any volume authored by a Jew, turn to a random page, and mention of either divine election or superior intelligence or both, won't be more than a few paragraphs away."

This may be the most ludicrous sentence ever penned. I tested it with four books off my bookshelf (The Crucible by Arthur Miller, See How They Ran by Gil Troy, The Twentieth Century by David Wallechinsky, and How We Got Here by David Frum) and went 0 for 4. I realize you were being hyperbolic, but hyperbole should have some basis in reality. I recall that Archie Bunker believed in superior Jewish intelligence and the (mostly Jewish) writing staff didn't portray this in any better light than his other beliefs.

Chaim: No doubt the true believers will say that you are a deliberate diversionary tactic.

Anonymous said...

Chiam: "So why did the late Richard Herrnstein talk about [Jewish IQ]"

If you look at Charles Murray's recent article in Commentary entitled "Jewish Genius," you'll see he writes the following:

"I have personal experience with the reluctance of Jews to talk about Jewish accomplishment—my co-author, the late Richard Herrnstein, gently resisted the paragraphs on Jewish IQ that I insisted on putting in The Bell Curve (1994). Both history and the contemporary revival of anti-Semitism in Europe make it easy to understand the reasons for that reluctance. But Jewish accomplishment constitutes a fascinating and important story."

Evil Neocon:
It does appear that Jews are a recognizable group, at least according to this recent study on "Discerning the ancestry of European Americans in genetic association studies."
http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.0030236.eor

Perhaps now, instead of subsuming Jews into the general category of "white," we should recognize them as their own ethnic group for purposes of affirmative action to achieve suitable "diversity" and limit them to 2.4% of educational and employment positions (as opposed to, say, 27% of the slots at Harvard)? Sound fair? After all, in the last 40 years, Jews have constituted most of the presidents of the Ivy League institutions and a good part of their faculty and administrations and have been instrumental in instituting "diversity" programs, which seem to have cost genitle whites many more slots than they cost the Jews. Perhaps this is what Steve was refering to when he talks about Jews reluctance to discuss the Jewish-Gentile IQ gap, and by extension, all IQ gaps?

Anonymous said...

Hey, now that Turkheimer shows his true colors towards scientific results that he doesn't agree with, would someone with the requisite technical expertise (thinking of Half-Sigma hint hint) like to look at his study finding that heritability increases with socio-economic status and is negligible at low levels of SES to see if there was any fudging going on?
-PhillyGuy

Anonymous said...

Lewontin is about the only big name that comes to mind, maybe some other lesser figures (not Gould, though!). But nothing like physics or psychology.

Dude -- you are *way* off base here. You should read the 8th day of creation sometime or hit jinfo. Just off the top of my head:

Arthur Kornberg (DNA polymerase)

Roger Kornberg (Ribosome)

Joshua Lederberg (conjugation)

Syd Brenner (C. elegans)

Paul Berg (recombinant DNA)

Erwin Chargaff (Chargaff's rules for DNA)

Francois Jacob
(lac operon)

Eric Lander (human genome project)

---

Seriously, Jews have contributed at approximately the same level in biomedicine as they have in physics.

Anonymous said...

The possibility of genetic engineering to raise intelligence was raised. Recall Cochrans theory on jewish IQ which stated that the fast evolution of IQ came with the unintended consequences of a whole bunch of diseases(Steve mentioned that jewish women are 40x more likely to get breast cancer,which I find hard to believe,but certainly its more common,which is one reason there is so much attention given to B.C.);just by observation,there is a,lot of mental retardation,OC disorder,etc in the J community. So if we start fooling around with our intellects,uhm,shouldnt the response be something along the lines of Jerry Seinfeld,when examining a scheme by Kramer, rolling his eyes and muttering,"Yeah...this will work!"

Anonymous said...

This is admittedly a tangential point, but this controversy strikes me as another example of the fact that, despite their claim to the mantle of science, it is the left which is most frequently guilty of politicizing it. Just compare this nature/nurture debate with the one surrounding sexual preference. Or consider which side in the abortion debate wants to talk about biology, and which side wants to talk about intangibles like "personhood".

Anonymous said...

What are "Jewish" features? Alona Tal? Sarah Michelle Gellar? Michelle Trachtenberg? An Israeli actress, Tal looks like Michelle Pfeiffer. Someone please enlighten me.

Moreover, intermarriage with Blacks and other races won't work because Blacks don't like it. Kobe Bryant's parents objected to his marriage to a Latina, and Bryant Senior was a well-traveled NBA player who played extensively in Italy at the end of his career. Black women in particular object to successful Black men marrying or having relationships with white women. Even beautiful women like Mariah Carey and Halle Berry struggle with acceptance from the Black community because of their mixed race heritage.

Blacks have collectively decided they will NOT intermarry and become assimilated. Hence all the social controls, "acting white," not "black enough" etc. and tremendous dislike of inter-marriage particularly with whites.

I am not unsympathetic to the view that Black's ancestors struggled so much, endured such hardships that to simply go the way of Jews, Italians, Irish would be a "betrayal" of the past struggles against slavery and segregation. It's ultimately limiting but I understand it.

Regardless, Saletan's arguments will fall on that part. More intriguingly, what if Cochran and others are RIGHT about Ashkenazi Jews? No one among the Egyptian, Greek, or Roman sources considered the pre-Diaspora Jews to be the source of any accomplishment, in the arts, architecture, law, mathematics, or anything else. This suggests that some fairly rapid evolutionary changes can take place IF one is willing to accept certain physiological trade-offs (hereditary diseases).

Could Blacks through culture (valuing explicitly studying, education, delayed gratification, etc) rapidly change the course of their sub-group evolution? Very likely IF Cochran is correct.

As for other intermarriages, IMHO they are dependent on rising income, physical and social mobility, etc. These trends may not continue in the future.

Anonymous said...

What did Milton Friedman and the neo-cons do for the human race? Please explain.

Jews score higher than Gentiles on IQ tests. How does it follow from this that Jews are smarter?

The Euro-Christian contribution to science and technology is enormous.

As far as I can tell the whole point of IQ tests is to tell certain kids that they are dumb and that Jews are smart.

Without Euro-Christians, the Jewish contribution to science and technology would be much lower high IQ score notwithtanding.

Was the destruction of Vietnam one of the necon contributions outstanding contributions to humanity. Were the throat -cutting contras another outstanding contribution? What was Milton Friedman's,-advisor to Chilean mass murderer and fascist Augusto Piniochet-outstanding contribution to humanity

Anonymous said...

Steve do you care to comment on Eternally Anonymous's claim that "Middle class whites will intermarry more with Hispanics than with Asians"?

My experience as a 10 year resident of SoCal working in a high-IQ profession(engineering), upper middle class area (Anaheim Hills) is that I know of many more Asian-White marriages than White-Hispanic.

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps now, instead of subsuming Jews into the general category of "white," we should recognize them as their own ethnic group for purposes of affirmative action to achieve suitable "diversity" and limit them to 2.4% of educational and employment positions (as opposed to, say, 27% of the slots at Harvard)? Sound fair?"

Sure, start your letter-writing campaign. Knock yourself out. But if you keep most of the best candidates out of the Ivy League schools (I assume you would also limit Asian-American slots to their percentage in the population), the best candidates will go elsewhere, and those new schools will become the new elite schools. In fact, that has already happened to an extent. If the Ivy League were based purely on merit, there would be even higher percentages of Asians and Jews there; instead, allowances made for legacies, children of large donors, and NAMs exclude a lot of highly-talented Asians and Jews. They end up raising the game at elite public schools like UC Berkeley, the University of Virginia, etc.

"I think Jews know the problems of being perceived as inherently superior in IQ, and the inference by many that this implies domination, parasitism. So they downplay it as much as they can."

This seems to be one of a number of no-win situations for Jews with respect to our detractors on this board. On the one hand, if we don't talk about the handful of IQ points that separate average Ashkenazi Jews and average gentile whites, we have nefarious reasons for not talking about it; on the other hand, if we do talk about it, we are accused of bragging (both accusations have been made here before).

A similar no-win situation is assimilation. Those of us who maintain some of our religious culture are faulted for not assimilating, and those of us who do assimilate are accused of doing so as part of some plan to keep down the non-Jews.

Also, your connection between intelligence and parasitism seems backwards. If anything, it's the opposite, isn't it? Those of us of average intelligence are mooching off the talents of the true geniuses: we use the computers they design, take the medicines the discover when we get sick, drive the cars and fly in the airplanes they design, etc. We owe a comfortable and affluent lifestyle most of all to the geniuses who have given and continue to give us the technologies we take for granted.

"I could've SWORN I'd explained this to you (more than once?), but I'll try it again:

Direction does not equal destination.


Could you be a little less vague, Svigor? Perhaps my ancestors didn't sharpen my intellect enough to appreciate your delphic comments without them being explicated.

Also, an additional question came to mind since my last post. There are Jewish minorities similar in percentage terms to the one in the U.S. in a number of other countries (e.g., Brazil). Jews are prominent in these countries too. Does the esteemed Dr. MacDonald propose that Brazilian Jews, for example, engage in similar "group strategies" too?

Anonymous said...

"Seriously, Jews have contributed at approximately the same level in biomedicine as they have in physics."

A couple of other Jewish Nobel Laureates who come to mind in this field are David Baltimore, currently the president of Caltech and Harold Varmus, currently the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

Interestingly, according to Dr. Varmus's bio, he appears to be one of the ~50% of American Jews who have married outside the faith. His wife has the decidedly gentile-sounding name of Constance Casey.

So much for our supposed evolutionary strategy. With reversion to the mean and marriage to a journalist, Dr. Varmus's kids will be lucky to have IQs over 140. Plus, with a kid named "Christopher", the chances are these children are not being raised as Jews.

Anonymous said...

scott says:

It's a conspiracy theory packaged as science.

This assumes that no conspiracies exist, and implies that if they did, we should not understand them.

Anonymous said...

What are "Jewish" features? Alona Tal? Sarah Michelle Gellar? Michelle Trachtenberg? An Israeli actress, Tal looks like Michelle Pfeiffer. Someone please enlighten me.

Despite the undeniable beauty of people like Gellar, those are all very atypical looking Jews. Being Hollywood, you can't even rule out nose jobs and the like. Charles Krauthammer is a good example of someone I would guess to be Jewish just by looking at him.

I could tell Regina Spector was Jewish before I knew she was Jewish. She just has that Eastern European Jew appearance. Incidentally, Michelle Trachtenberg (who is actually half-Jewish) looks like she could be Spector's better looking sister.

Of course, you can't always tell. When I have a beard I look like a younger version of Shmuley Boteach. When I went into a convenience store to grab some Guinness about two months ago, the clerk jokingly shouted out "Shalom in the Home!" I've got what people call the Jewish or Indian nose, the curly Semitic beard, and the not-quite-northern-European face. People often guess that I'm Jewish or Italian when we first meet. If they know my surname, Weisensee (from the German Weißensee or "White Lake," a district of Berlin), they tend to presume it's Jewish - I guess because it sounds kind of similar to names like Weiss, Weismann, etc. In actuality, I'm mostly German. I do wonder, though, if I might not have some southern European ancestry since the trait for beta-thalassemia (so-called "Mediterranean anemia") runs on my mother's side. Strangely, that side of the family comes from the rural South, not exactly known for its large Italian, Greek, or Portuguese populations. My maternal relatives blame the slightly odd looks on Indian ancestors, but those sort of family legends are common in the South and Indians don't carry thalassemia. It's a mystery.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps I was not clear, but I view upper middle class (doctors, lawyers, engineers, upper-level management) as a somewhat different group than small business owners and mid-level managers. Now, many Asians own small businesses but I see those types sticking to themselves.

I am more optimistic than many here about the future of Hispanics, and I suspect that those who avoid crime, addiction and involvement in unwed births will make it to the middle class even if it takes a few generations. Besides, Hispanic men and women seem to marry whites in equal numbers as opposed to the
gender-skewing of black men and
Asian women in that regard so I think that there may be more white-Hispanic marriages over all.

Unfortunately lot of American-born or raised Hispanic women who live in black neighborhoods adopt that incredibly destructive black attitude of wanting a hard thug. So even if they do end up with white guys they probably won't raise their kids' IQs or assimilate the women toward the middle
class.

Rob,
Black women will never choose "very capable sperm donors" in high enough numbers to make a dent in the IQ gap. I read an article last year in NYT about a black woman who wanted a Hispanic sperm donor so her child would be light-skinned, but the whole point of a sperm bank is so a woman can choose a sperm donor who will not try to interfere with the kid's upbringing or sue for custody and visitation. It is very easy to find a black guy who will do exactly that without the expense and trouble of going to a sperm bank. And just as most white people marry despite the divorce rate, most black women try to find a responsible black partner in spite of the odds agaist it. If and when the guy flakes on her she picks up and moves on, raising the kid on her own. Very few black women plan to raise kids on their own just as few whites plan to get divorced but they are prepared for it if that's what happens.

Eternally Anonymous

Anonymous said...

A College Professor of mine (who was Jewish) once said two things about Jews that I have never forgotten.

Abba Eban had recently given a speech at our College. I was young and eager to impress.

So I asked him if he had heard the lecture.

"Who? Abba Eban?" and there was a long pause filled with a big fat silent "And?"

Dashed but not discouraged I started trying to formulate a question or statement that would win him over. But he bailed me out and actually asked ME a question.

"So, what did he say? Anything?"

"Ummm, (blank) well, (and then it came to me, I actually remembered this one line that got a big hand from the audience) he said, emphatically, that Israel must be Jewish, and Democratic."

"Pfft, what a...he's a dreamer."

"What do you mean?" I asked, and out came the two remarks back to back.

"Jews are the smartest and dumbest people at the same time.

How can ANYTHING Jewish be Democratic?"

My point is; we've heard over and over again about their intellectual superiority. And there is some obvious justification for this. But it is hardly an unconditional absolute.

I mean, if a group of people as authoritarian as Jews obviously are (Communism, Zionism, Multi-culturalism) insist on convincing the world that Israel (and the USA)is Democtratic, that it's treatment of Palestinians is at turns either a figment of our imagination or just deserts; That the "The Master Race" is a bad expression, but "The Chosen People" isn't. That a Scientist like SJ Gould can willingly, knowingly try to stuff Darwin into a PC Straight-jacket, I mean, how smart can they be?

Perhaps its time to talk a bit about the flip side to that coin. Why not? We can do it with just about every OTHER group.

Anonymous said...

"However, if this racial realism/human biodiversity stuff is real (and I think it is), then technological solutions such as genetic engineering offer the only positive-sum solution to dealing with these issues. "

The trouble with the focus on genetic engineering is that you don't enhance IQ in the same way with all people. There are people who will end up being very gifted in ways that don't necessarily give them an economic advantage. For instance, on my mother's side of the family, smarter offspring would have better memories and better diction but the improvement in mathematical reasoning would probably fall somewhere between accountant and computer programmer.

I think most of the contributors here want people to be smarter so that they are better at math and science but that isn't realistic. People will just be better at what they already do well.

Anonymous said...

Re Anonymous 5:13 pm: "More Asian-white marriages than white-Hispanic..." Obviously,what we need here are hotter Mexican women! Yes,some are quite attractive,but the majority are pretty humdrum. Steve?

Anonymous said...

OT but I might as well bring it up while we are on the topic of Jews:

One of the biggest mysteries I find with Jews is why their women tend toward having more masculine voices than non-Jewish white women. Perhaps masculine in the wrong word, but I've noticed there is definitely a difference in the mean timbre of Jewish and non-Jewish women's voices. This isn't merely something with the nasally East Coast accent (though that tends to make the difference more pronounced), but something I've noticed even with Jews raised in places like California and Texas. To get an idea of what I mean, here is a dialogue between Jennifer Morrison and Lisa Edelstein imitating Valley Girls.

Jewish men also have slightly more feminine voices than non-Jewish white men, though the difference isn't as noticeable. Still, I don't think I've ever encountered a Jewish man with as baritone a voice as Brad Roberts. I had some pretty deep-voiced non-Jewish friends in high school.

Anonymous said...

I always found it interesting that those who will not consider Israel democratic unless it treats the Palestinians perfectly are often the same people who bristle at any suggestion that the Jim Crow South (or even the slave South) should get any demerits for the condition of black people in it. If you believe in equal treatment for all people regardless of race, that should apply at home as well as abroad; if you believe in ruthless domination by the majority culture, I don't agree with you, but at least I would give you points for consistency if you believe in it abroad as well as at home.

Also, do any secular Jews consider Jews "the Chosen People?" I would think acceptance of the term would require acceptance of the Torah. I highly doubt that Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky, or Stephen Jay Gould (let alone the raised-Christian Karl Marx) considered himself part of a Chosen People.

Anonymous said...

Chaim sez:

"And why does Saletan? Why am I talking about [the Jewish-Gentile IQ difference], for that matter?"

I would guess to blow off some nervous energy. Relieve some tension. Reduce the anxiety that the Gentiles are a-comin' fer ya agin. Try to ridicule them and get them to shut up with the "Dr. Mac" stuff, or example.

A whole bunch of reasons, I would guess, but all pretty much related to the eternal fear of American Christian boogeymen jumping out of the closet and slaughtering Jews just like the Germans did.

Can't trust 'em. Just can't do it. Never. Nope. It's like a virus. Infects 'em all. All the goyim. "In every generation ... "

Anonymous said...

If inter-racial mating is to be the solution to low black IQ (and higher white IQ of course) why not jews & blacks rather than blacks & whites, in fact - specifically - lets put jewish girls and black boys together. All those Democratic, anti-racist jews could have no objection to that now could they.

Anonymous said...

Chaim said: "Sure, start your letter-writing campaign. Knock yourself out. But if you keep most of the best candidates out of the Ivy League schools (I assume you would also limit Asian-American slots to their percentage in the population), the best candidates will go elsewhere, and those new schools will become the new elite schools. In fact, that has already happened to an extent. If the Ivy League were based purely on merit, there would be even higher percentages of Asians and Jews there; instead, allowances made for legacies, children of large donors, and NAMs exclude a lot of highly-talented Asians and Jews. They end up raising the game at elite public schools like UC Berkeley, the University of Virginia, etc."

First of all, Chiam, I don't actually support ethnic quotas for University admissions and job hiring and promotions. I think University places should be awarded solely according to standardized measures of academic proficiency and intellectual aptitude (i.e., uniform and objective measures such as SATs and AP exams as opposed to highly subjective school grades) and not things such as being an athlete, NAM, left wing political activist, or an alumnus child.

My statement that you objected to was a rhetorical device to illustrate why, in my opinion, Jews are reticent to talk about their high achievement. Being recognized as a high achieving minority distinct from whites would be "bad for the Jews" in a society whose conception of fairness is that positions and benefits are to be distributed not according to merit, but among ethnic and racial groups in proportion to their percentage of the general population to ensure "suitable diversity." Ironically, Jews have been in the forefront of advocating and implementing just such a society in the US, but have largely protected themselves from the consequences they would otherwise suffer by subsuming themselves in the general white population where they are free to compete for 60-70%of the slots instead of just 2.4%. One can only assume that the critical role played by Jews in implementing affirmative action and diversity programs was motivated (at least at a subconscious level) by a desire to reduce white gentile influence and power and increase cultural pluralism so that no one cultural group would be dominant in the US and be in a position to expel or kill the Jews after they get fed up with their disproportionate economic success and their massive, culture-changing influence on society, as has eventually happened in virtually EVERY homogenous society that Jews have been a minority in.

I also take issue with your statments that Jews and Asians would be even more overrepresented relative to white gentiles at elite institutions if admissions were based purely on merit, assuming merit means objective test performance and not left-wing political involvement. Looking at the SAT score ranges, there is an enormous amount of overlap in intellectual talent between Univerities occupying different levels of prestige. If admissions were based solely on IQ or SAT scores (which are basically IQ scores), Jews would not occupy about 30% of the slots, as they currently do at the Ivies. Even assuming a very generous Jew-White gentile IQ gap of .86 SD (as per the small NLSY sample - the real size of the gap is probably only about 9 or 10 points) or looking at the current Jew-White gentile SAT gap (about 100 points), Jews would constitute about 10-12% of the students at the Ivies, not 30%. With respect to Asians, the White-Asian SAT gap is only about 20 points and there are more than 6 times as many white as Asian test takers. In a merit based system, Jews and Asians would be overrepresnted relative to their proportion of the US populations, but their overrepresentation would largely be at the expense of black and hispanic students, who would be reduced to a few percent of the student body. You would not have the current situation where white gentiles are represented at elite private universities at about half their proportion of the college age general population. There is actually a pretty good prima facie case for discrimination against white-gentiles at elite private Universities such as the Ivies, and what ethnicity, pray tell, are the majority of the presidents and administrators of these Universities? I don't think they're WASPs anymore. One phenomenon that we are now seeing is a tendancy for talented white gentiles to enroll in state university honors programs and I think that in the future we will see a much greater number of future innovators and leaders comming from state institutions.

Also, your reference to legacy admittees is a red herring. Firstly, in this day and age there are now quite a few Jewish legacies at the Ivies (in fact they would be overrepresented). Second, with a few exceptions for the children of really rich and powerful people, legacy admittees, as opposed to NAMs and athletes, are just as well qualified as regular academic admittees with non-alumni parents and do just as well in their course of studies. (After all, the parents Ivy league legacy admittees tend not to be stupid people.) The main reason for giving the nod to a legacy student over an equally qualified non-legacy student is fund-raising from the legacy admittee's parents. Elite schools do not, however, generally give legacy applicants the nod of better qualified students.

Anonymous said...

"I mean, if a group of people as authoritarian as Jews obviously are..."

What an ignorant statement, especially in the context of a comment mentioning Abba Eban. If you had learned anything about the man after hearing him speak (and you should have, as he was one of the best living orators in the English language -- one of at least 7 languages in which he was fluent) you'd know that he was the farthest thing in the world from "authoritarian".

Had he been Prime Minister, he probably would have been able to establish a final peace with the Palestinians. He was so well-respected internationally that he was elected vice president of the UN General Assembly, despite representing a country as unpopular as Israel. He was less popular in Israel than he was abroad though. A young country built by men carrying shovels and rifles could never wrap its arms around a man whose given name was Aubrey and who spoke English like Tony Blair; he was considered too elite in a blue collar country.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

You might find this interesting. The guest for this week's Financial Times lunch interview is Craig Venter ("Lunch with the FT: Craig Venter"). The FT asked him about Watson:

"One of Venter’s best-known opponents during the 1990s was James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, who had by chance arrived in London at the same time as Venter to promote his own autobiography Avoid Boring People. By the time of our lunch, however, Watson had returned to the US in disgrace after a newspaper quoted him making an apparently racist remark about Africans, for which he later apologised.

When I mention Watson, Venter is quick to condemn his remarks. “Skin colour as a surrogate for race is a social and not a scientific concept,” he says. “There is no basis in the human genetic code for the notion that colour will be predictive of intelligence.” But he adds: “I think Watson disagreed with himself. I don’t think he believes what he was reported as saying.”"


The FT goes on to note there's still some bad blood between Venter and Watson from the '90's issues:

"It is clear, however, that Venter has not forgiven Watson for turning him into “the poster boy for the commercialisation of research” by talking consistently about the “Venter patents” on newly discovered genes. “In Vietnam, we talked about the ‘gookification’ of the enemy and Watson is a pro at that,” he says. “He knew they were not my patents … They were my discoveries but not my patents. It affects me to this day – people still talk about me commercialising the common heritage of mankind.”

Interesting how Venter carefully phrased his denial.

Anonymous said...

"Despite the undeniable beauty of people like Gellar, those are all very atypical looking Jews. Being Hollywood, you can't even rule out nose jobs and the like. Charles Krauthammer is a good example of someone I would guess to be Jewish just by looking at him."

I don't know her ancestry, but Sarah Michelle Gellar has a look fairly common to Jews of Polish ancestry (the pretty, deep-set eyes). She looks a lot like a cousin of mine. I have always wondered if Charles Krauthammer's face was disfigured in the accident that paralyzed him. If I didn't know he was Jewish, I wouldn't be convinced of it by his photo. An example of someone I'd immediately assume was Jewish, even if I didn't know his background or name is Joe Klein. The way Klein looks is how I imagine my ancestors might have looked before they mixed with the locals in Eastern Europe -- maybe how they looked before they moved west of the Euphrates.

Anonymous said...

I don't know her ancestry, but Sarah Michelle Gellar has a look fairly common to Jews of Polish ancestry (the pretty, deep-set eyes).

I know her father (from whom she seems to be estranged) is of Hungarian Jewish background. I'm not sure about her mother's ancestry other than that she is Jewish as well. Yes, she has beautiful and rather wide eyes. That is something I tend to associate with the more western Eastern European Ashkhenazim. I notice a lot more narrow-eyed and vaguely Mongoloid Jews (like David Horowitz) further east, especially among Russian Jews.

You're right about Klein. He is a Jew if I ever saw one. It's funny how you can spot many Jews after a while even if you didn't know they were Jewish by their surnames and even if they aren't nearly as obvious as Klein. There appears to be a few common phenotypes that crop up again and again. Even, as you seem to indicate, Sarah Michelle Gellar has a certain sort of face I could swear I've seen before on other Jews.

Here is a kind of Jew I've seen repeatedly: Paul Reubens (aka Pee-wee Herman), Glenn Greenwald, and Dan Abrams. Granted, it's a spectrum and Abrams is a hell of a lot better looking than Pee-wee, but you can probably spot the general resemblance even if it is hard to pin down to a few distinct features.

Unknown said...

Interesting how Venter carefully phrased his denial.

Yeah, nice straw man there Craig. Venter is a conniving little SOB, no doubt about it.

Anonymous said...

"Granted, it's a spectrum and Abrams is a hell of a lot better looking than Pee-wee, but you can probably spot the general resemblance even if it is hard to pin down to a few distinct features."

Pee-wee, now that I think about it from looking at that photo, is another Jew whose ancestors don't seem to have mixed a lot with the locals in the last few thousand years. His eyes, in particular, are a little reminiscent of the look you see in ancient Sumerian drawings. Interestingly, you don't seem to see a lot of that look among modern Iraqis.

Looks in general are often a matter of insecurity for American Jews, since the standard of attractiveness in this country has long been a Northern European look. Partly because that was the original ethnic stock of this country, partly because there is something pleasantly symmetrical, I think, about typical Scandinavian looks in particular, and party because the American media (including many Jewish executives) selected, for the most part, individuals with Northern European-type looks as actors and actresses.

That has started to change a little in recent years though. It used to be that the only leading Jewish actors or actresses were ones not easily recognizable as Jews, e.g., Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Tanya Roberts, etc. Today though, you have some ladies and leading men who are both considered attractive and (at least to me) have fairly typical Jewish looks, e.g., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Noah Wylie, Rachel Weisz, David Duchovny, etc.

Anonymous said...

"Yeah, nice straw man there Craig. Venter is a conniving little SOB, no doubt about it."

Direction isn't destination.

Anonymous said...

The supporters of Watson and Murray continue to ignore evidence that contradicts Watson and Murray. Outside of a few worthles putdowns, Turkhiemer's research is completely ignored.

I also want to point out that that the NBER(national bureau of Economic research) has put out research as far back as 1994 that contradicts Watson and Murray. This research is ignored also. As a mentioned previously, Economist Brad Delong has sted that Herstien and Murray completly suppresed environmental variables. Steven J Gould and Black Economist and econometrician Glen Loury pointed out in 1994 that the Murray/Herstiens corelations are not robust.

There is no doubt that there is a true believer mindset among Watson's supporters. Just take a look at Svigors comments.

My own view is that IQ and race research is scientifically trivial research(a view held by former Harvard professor of theoretical physics and ultra -reactionary Lubos Motl). The only thng that matters are the preumed policy consequences of this research.

To answer Peter Brimelow's question is it sceinece or not: it is shallow and trivial science- on the same level as stamp collecting. There is no deep theoretical structure-organized around deep scientific principles- behind race and IQ research.
Immigration reform doesn't require a discussion of IQ and race. It does require a discussion about the racial composition of America.

Asians are not interchangeable with Euro-Americans in Silicon Valley, the State University of California, the medical profession and the engineering professional.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Mac replies to Turkheimer. Link HERE.

Anonymous said...

"Dr. Mac replies to Turkheimer. Link HERE."

Interesting post. Dr. Mac is subtler than the commenters who parrot him here. Unlike commenters here, Dr. Mac does not claim that discussion of high Jewish IQ is verbotten by Jews and the MSM; on the contrary, he acknowledges that "High Jewish IQ is celebrated and considered worthy of learned analyses and commentary in the mainstream media." So, contrary to the claims of some people here, Dr. Mac doesn't think us Jews are afraid of talk about IQ. He thinks what we're really afraid of is that, (to borrow a Sailer phrase) in triple-bank shot fashion, "such studies might also provide clues on the biological roots of collectivism".

I say: Bring it on. Let's see if the geneticists can find the Jewish gene for collectivism. Then let's get a cheek swab from a Jewish uber-capitalist like Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone and see if he's got that gene. While we're at it, let's get a swab from his non-Jewish partners Hamilton James and Peter Peterson and see if they've got it.

I may disagree with Dr. Mac's elaborate conspiracy theories about Jews, but I do agree with him on one thing: genetic research shouldn't be stymied for fear of hurting anyone's sensibilities.

Anonymous said...

Chaim, capitalism (esp. as it is currently practiced, but also in the "pure" form that never existed and never will exist) is just another example of collectivism. Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism - no different that Methodism, Rotarianism, Presbyterianism, Catholicism, etc. There are a lot of clubs (collectives) that people belong to.

And if you think that "Capitalism" is a meritocracy, look closely into the roots of the concept of "merit" that is at work in any Capitalist organization. Affirmative action and set-asides were originally deemed necessary on the basis that talented people outside a given business's tribe should be given a fair chance to join, too.

The point is not to support Affirmative Action, but to direct your attention to the fact that we are all collectivists. Merit is a secondary consideration: first we select for our relevant group (racial or whatever), then within that group we seek out technical merit.

Think I'm full of it? Well, when was the last time a smart heterosexual non-Jewish White man wrote a financially successful Broadway musical? You'd have to go back years. Is it just that that demographic has no talent? What is the relevant definition of merit? Sure, that demographic is underreprested because it just doesn't have the talent...and the Soviet Union failed because of 70 years of bad weather.

Try to get any job "above the line" in Hollywood while being conspicuously not "tribe" (to use the going term there). Capitalist execs left a billion dollars on the table rather than make a non-ironic Jesus movie that they dishonestly spun as an attack on their tribe.

Something like 80 - 90% of the handful of oligarchs who looted Russia were Jews, as were their Harvard advisers. Think about that. They were big "Capitalists," some of the biggest in the world.

Finally, try a little experiment: attempt to move in with some Mestizo illegal aliens and be a part of the household, doing jobs that will support the family, sending money back to the family in Mexico. Let me know how how you're received. Real world hint: it won't be with open arms (I am assuming that you are not Mestizo). Nor will you be received with rose petals scattered in front of you in the street, to borrow a neocon phrase.

Speaking of neocons, notice how many of them were "Communists" one decade, "Capitalists" or "Conservatives" the next. The labels change, the wine is the same.

Ignore abstract labels - like Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Methodism, Bapist, Protestant, Rotarian, Menshevik, Presbyterian, Bolshevik, Catholic, Lutheran - and look at the (familial/racial) tribes beneath, there is the explanation of human behavior.

Anonymous said...

Drat, I meant to write "there is the key to human behavior." Apologies.

Anonymous said...

Tanya Roberts is Jewish?! I checked. Only one of her parents is/was Jewish. She does have a stereotypical Jewish female voice, by the way, and it's particularly tough on the ears. No baritone Jewish men? Ha. Gene Simmons is Jewish, and I've personally known Jews with baritone voices. I do agree that Jewish male generally don't sound as masculine as non-Jewish white males. Testosterone could be part of it, given the links between testosterone and voice and, inversely, testosterone and IQ.

Anonymous said...

Jewish features, tough to define, but I'll it a try. Large nose defined at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=345&letter=N, rather small lower jaw, chin that isn't square, dark coloring, hair that is thick and curly. There is, or was, a website that purports to identify ethnicity of head shots using an undisclosed formula.

Anonymous said...

Another characteristic is the high forehead, although that might be more Middle Eastern than Jewish in particular.

Anonymous said...

Ack, I forgot the lips, "fish lips" I once heard them called. At least a full lower lip will be present in most Jews, while white non-Jewish males often have thin lips. I'm sure the lips differ among the non-Jewish whites of various ethnicities, but that's too far off the topic.