Here's Karen Kaplan's profile in the Los Angeles Times of Gregory Cochran: "Jewish Legacy Inscribed on the Genes." (It's now the most emailed article on the LA Times website and the second most heavily viewed article.)
Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?
Tay-Sachs disease. Canavan disease. More than a dozen more.It offended Cochran's sense of logic. Natural selection, the self-taught genetics buff knew, should flush dangerous DNA from the gene pool. Perhaps the mutations causing these diseases had some other, beneficial purpose. But what?The "faulty" genes, Cochran concluded, make Jews smarter.
At 3:17 one morning, after a long night searching a database of scientific journals from his disheveled home office in Albuquerque, Cochran fired off an e-mail to his collaborator Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
"I've figured it out, I think," Cochran typed. "Pardon my crazed excitement."
That provocative -- some would say inflammatory -- hypothesis has landed Cochran and Harpending in the middle of a charged debate about the link between IQ and DNA.
They have been sneered at by colleagues and excoriated on Internet forums. They have been welcomed to speak at a synagogue and a Jewish medical society. They were asked to write a book; that effort, "The 10,000 Year Explosion," was published early this year.
Scientists are increasingly finding that propensities for human behaviors -- for addiction, aggression, risk-taking and more -- are written in our genes. But the idea that some groups of people are inherently smarter is troubling to many. Some scientists say it has such racist implications it's unworthy of consideration.
"What are their theories about those on the opposite end of the spectrum?" asked Neil Risch, director of the Institute for Human Genetics at UC San Francisco, who finds the matter so offensive he can barely discuss it without raising his voice. "Do they have genetic theories about why Latinos and African Americans perform worse academically?"
The biological basis for intelligence can be a thankless arena of inquiry. The authors of "The Bell Curve" were vilified 15 years ago for suggesting genes played a role in IQ differences among racial groups.
And here's Karen Kaplan's LA Times' article on John Hawks back in February.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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66 comments:
From the article:
"The biological basis for intelligence can be a thankless arena of inquiry. The authors of "The Bell Curve" were vilified 15 years ago for suggesting genes played a role in IQ differences among racial groups."
"Vilified" is exactly the right verb, as are "suggesting" and "played a role." And yes, it's "IQ differences" and not "superiority" or "inferiority."
Gosh, I'm impressed. I've never thought a journalist is capable of using such precise language in the context of race and IQ. Kudos to Ms. Kaplan.
I am offended, offended, does this imply that all races are not identical? Oh my how will we live!?
A good job by Kaplan. Most of the comments that follow the article lead me to believe that pc might be dying a bit as in the past even journalists couldn't write a decent article on anything related to IQ. The average Jane and Joe know that intelligence is not just a by-product of hard work. It's those who make their living stirring up trouble to promote themselves, it's butt-licking profs, it's journalists raised in the post-60s, it's teachers who've been told intelligence tests show us NOTHING, it's pols who wish the subject would just go away...it's all of these people who are the problem, not moms and dads.
So why won't the National Review or Fox News talk about this stuff.
Neil Risch... who finds the matter so offensive he can barely discuss it without raising his voice.What kind of person refuses to believe something is true for the sole reason that it's unpleasant? How can you trust any conclusion reached by such a person?
We can expect Kaplan's demotion to the metro beat any day now.
Re the scientist in the article who said "there's already too much antisemitism [to do any research related to Jewish genetics]":
What a moron. The idea that antisemites or racists somehow actually rely on science or facts to back up or advance their nonsense beliefs is silly. They may sometimes cite scientific articles or facts, usually out of context, to give themselves a veneer of credibility. But almost always their beliefs are essentially faith-based, ie ideological. Both racists and ideological anti-racists are gullible idiots who use their faith/ideology as a way to feel better about themselves.
The Nazis had almost no facts or science to back up their racial ideology. Same with the Commies and their economic ideology. They did what all good ideologues do: they simply made up the science as needed.
Anon --
Because IQ is relatively unimportant compared to the eternal war in America between those who want cheap land and expensive labor (populists) and those who want the reverse (elites).
Discussing advances in understanding genetics and IQ is about as relevant as discussing post-Modern art during the Blitz. The immediate problem is survival.
IQ differences are important but are not the be and end all of success. Just as important is cooperation. It's highly likely that Europe went from low-IQ, low cooperative populations in say, 900 AD, to very high IQ and high cooperative states by say 1900.
This suggests that culture MATTERS, not the least of which is that it forms the dominant physical environment for sexual/natural selection. I know, icky Darwinism, but there you have it.
Europeans were considered by Greek and Roman writers as "stupid" and no one in the Ancient world thought the Jews were "smart." This suggests that fairly massive changes in both behavior (both Europeans and pre-Classical Jews were an uncooperative, feuding bunch) and genetics can happen in fairly short periods.
I'm always struck by my Scots Ancestors. A bunch of feuding and feudal peoples, mostly small farmers and fishermen, illiterate, producing nothing notable whatsoever in the classic, clan-derived society. Not even thirty years after the defeat at Culloden, it was fair to speak of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Suggesting strongly that certain social rules, even if imposed by force, brutally, can have profound changes on society for better or worse in both IQ and cooperation.
High IQ is of course nothing if not utilized in high cooperation societies. If your society resembles a bottle of scorpions, winner take all, loser gets nothing, that IQ will never amount to anything.
As for Jewish intelligence, it like the Jews are likely to be disappearing in the SWPL barren-ness. Most Jewish men and women are SWPL Yuppies. And that class does not reproduce, relying instead on culture and technology to produce a "janissary effect" in converting previously working/middle class groups into status-obsessed yuppies who remain single forever.
The few Jews who DO marry and have kids, tend to be overtly religious and retain middle class attitudes. But that's maybe 25% of US Jews. Even in Israel, there are relatively few Jews who marry and/or have kids.
"One criticism about our paper is 'It can't mean anything because they didn't do any new experiments,' " Cochran said. "OK, then I guess Einstein's papers didn't mean anything either.
Look, I know that there are many Greg Cochran fanboys that read Steve's site. And let me say that I consider Cochran to be a very bright scientist, possibly even a genius.
But I mean come on. He's comparing himself to Einstein!? For a paper that says Jews are really smart (whudda thunkit?) and that maybe this has something to do with their genes for diseases....
I'd heard that he could be pompous and arrogant, but I never saw anything like it until now.
K said: What kind of person refuses to believe something is true for the sole reason that it's unpleasant?A coward. (And someone not to be trusted.)
Fox News has talked about it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517074,00.html
Also, beneath the specific details of the firefighters' lawsuit lies an uncomfortable truth: On most standardized tests, regardless of the subject, blacks score lower than whites.
I've had biologists say that our work isn't science because we didn't do new experiments - rather, we analyzed existing data. But that can often be an effective approach, and in physics, it is the norm: you typically have experimentalists who build/do experiments and theorists who analyze those experiments and develop theories.
Einstein was a theorist: he didn't do the lab work. Yet he was doing science. That is the point I was making, as part of a long conversation with Karen Kaplan.
For a paper that says Jews are really smart (whudda thunkit?) and that maybe this has something to do with their genes for diseases....
I'd heard that he could be pompous and arrogant, but I never saw anything like it until now.There are a multitude of potential reasons why Jews are at risk for certain diseases which have nothing to do with genes boosting Jewish intelligence.
Cochran's ideas are more of an educated guess than a scientific theory.
"I remember in "The Bell Curve", the curve for blacks was supposed to be the same as for whites, just offset to an average of 85 points from 100 points."
I've seen graphs comparing the bell curves for black and white populations that have the black curve taller, and consequently narrower. No, I'm not going to go searching for them now. I'm lazy, but I blame it on my genes.
On most standardized tests, regardless of the subject, blacks score lower than whites.It goes further than that:
Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white children from families below the poverty line.Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.
"I'd heard that he could be pompous and arrogant, but I never saw anything like it until now."
check out the marketplace of ideas podcast on itunes. he didn't sound pompous during the interview...
Anonymous said,
"But I mean come on. He's comparing himself to Einstein!?"
No, you "come on."
Did you read most of the comments that followed the article? If not, you should. Thankfully, while some people appreciated the article and the subject and showed some intelligence in their remarks, others revealed their sheer ignorance of science.
So, I ask you to consider those people. I'd be willing to bet that they'd be hard pressed to name more than two scientists, and the first name that would come to their minds is Einstein.
I am sure Cochran was aware of that part of his audience. To have given another name would have been lost on half of those who read the article.
Oh, and another thing--he didn't compare himself to Einstein. If he had, though, it wouldn't have changed a thing about his and Harpending's hypothesis, however.
It always amazes me that people take for granted that humans are smarter than dogs, gorillas, tapeworms and beetles, but that they can't or won't understand that the same thing that makes humans smarter than tapeworms can also make one group of humans smarter than another. Humans are smarter than the other species because we evolved that way, and evolution happens by descent.
Even Jews that I talk to that realize that there in fact semi hard-coded disparities in intelligence are loath to admit that Jewish intelligence can't be wholly explained by a "superior culture."
What a crock.
I mean, even in the most authentically Jewish of states, in Israel, you see the kind of inevitable social stratification Amy Chua highlights in World on Fire. The Ashkenazim in Israel have higher incomes, greater social status, and more political power than the Mizrahi which in turn fare better than the Arabs which fare better than the immigrant Ethiopian Jews. Apparently the latter group has a pretty significant rate of higher criminal offending and a higher army drop-out rate, despite their eagerness to demonstrate their religious bona fides (can anyone comment on this?). And this is despite the ostensible commitment across groups to ethnic Zionism. The exact same IQ logic repeats itself everywhere I've tried to examine it.
testing99,
Scotland did have a culture before the 18th century enlightenment.
The Makars, the first great writers of English outside England, Napier, whose Logarithms were an important contribution to maths. There are also many fine Abbeys and Castles. And whiskey.
I think the Reformation is the key.
But on the whole you are right. The Scots went from being peripheral to centre stage in a very short period of time.
Wha's better n'us?
Richard the jockney
I've never thought a journalist is capable of using such precise language in the context of race and IQ. Kudos to Ms. KaplanExcept, alas, when she writes things like this:
"sphingolipids, the fat molecules that transmit nerve signals". LOL.
This article expains it all a lot better--->>>
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/1478/
I'm trying to figure out if McSweeny and O'brien's posts mean I'm not an anti-Semite or a white supremacist, since I violate their criteria, or that I am, and need to start following their rules to keep them happy.
Very confusing!
"I've figured it out, I think," Cochran typed. "Pardon my crazed excitement."
The "faulty" genes, Cochran concluded, make Jews smarter.Just one small problem here: Cochran was not the first person to reach this conclusion.
Yes, it's quite hilarious how white supremacist websites have no problem posting up IQ charts to "prove" that whites are superior to blacks, but completely ignore that the Asian and Jewish scores are higher than whites.I don't think "white supremacists" ignore this - the white nationalist organization American Renaissance is one of the few forums that gives people like Rushton a platform for his research, and Kevin MacDonald commented on high Jewish IQ and its possible relation to Jewish genetic diseases far before Cochran had anything to say on the matter (MacDonald has also assisted Cochran in this research, if I'm not mistaken, although they differ on their explanations for what the driving evolutionary force behind high Jewish IQ is).
The Jews have long sought to repress eugenics and even genetic science itself. I think they instinctively realize that these could lead to the loss of their IQ advantage.
"Even in Israel, there are relatively few Jews who marry and/or have kids."
Their total fertility rate is 2.77, so obviously someone there is having kids. Perhaps the Askenazis are not.
MacSweeney,
"The fact that white supremacists seem to hate Jews EVEN MORE than blacks is quite amazing to me. David Duke's website is about 80% anti Jew articles."
I think the idea is that a highly intelligent elite subgroup of a population simply just has the potential to do more (whether it be nefarious or beneficial) than the lagging subgroup of a population isn't that controversial.
And no, you don't have to be a rabid anti-Semite to notice this.
Each group has the potential to exhibit and has exhibited behaviors both beneficial and malignant to the majority population that are commensurate to their respective mental endowments.
So for all the Nobel prizes and entrepreneurial success that is rightly heralded as the great contribution of Jews to the US in the 20th century, we have rather toxic intellectual, cultural, and political developments.
And for all the musical and athletic accomplishments we have enjoyed from blacks, we have social dysfunction and pathology, crime and violence.
Perhaps one may quibble with the proportionality, but one surely cannot completely ignore one side of contributions, whether beneficial or malevolent.
---Maybe the rise of autism across high-IQ American population is the result of assortative mating? I've read that autism is something akin to extreme male brain.---
May be related to stupid low fat diets. Dennis Managan has more.
Nah, I'm not talking about Rushton and people like that, I mean hardcore white nationalists/supremacists like David Duke and the people who frequent stormfront.org. They definitely bash Jews and try to deny their intellect. Recall this passage from Mein Kampf:
In judging the Jewish people's attitude on the question of human culture, the most essential characteristic we must always bear in mind is that there has never been a Jewish art and accordingly there is none today either; that above all the two queens of all the arts, architecture and music, owe nothing original to the Jews. What they do accomplish in the field of art is either patchwork or intellectual theft. Thus, the Jew lacks those qualities which distinguish the races that are creative and hence culturally blessed.
To what an extent the Jew takes over foreign culture, imitating or rather ruining it, can be seen from the fact that he is mostly found in the art which seems to require least original invention, the art of acting. But even here, in reality, he is only a ' juggler,' or rather an ape; for even here he lacks the last touch that is required for real greatness; even here he is not the creative genius, but a superficial imitator, and all the twists and tricks that he uses are powerless to conceal the inner lifelessness of his creative gift. Here the Jewish press most lovingly helps him along by raising such a roar of hosannahs about even the most mediocre bungler, just so long as he is a Jew, that the rest of the world actually ends up by thinking that they have an artist before them, while in truth it is only a pitiful comedian.
No, the Jew possesses no culture-creating force of any sort, since the idealism, without which there is no true higher development of man, is not present in him and never was present. Hence his intellect will never have a constructive effect, but will be destructive, and in very rare cases perhaps will at most be stimulating, but then as the prototype of the ' force which always wants evil and nevertheless creates good.' Not through him does any progress of mankind occur, but in spite of him.I know what you're thinking: using Hitler as an example is pretty extreme, but I see sentiments like this (albeit softened) from David Duke all the time. Things like, "Who cares if they thought up the Theory of Relativity, us Aryans made this society!"
Sigh. There you go again, Steve. Why censor a comment just because it sarcastically mocks another comment stating that "the Nazis had no science" or whatever? Why can Gouldian leftists like Robert Proctor write grudging books on the ridiculousness of such a statement, but someone on your "side" can't say the same thing? I swear, it's that old Christian dualism at work here, some post-War theology where all the Germans fill the role of Satan and heaven forbid anything not-negative be said about them. The Germans were the greatest scientists in the world at the time in, without hyperbole, pretty much every field, and that includes one of your passions, racial science. For some moron to stumble upon this site and claim otherwise is an affront. Why am I not allowed to defend a truism of history here?
@Svigor
I tend to agree that multiracialism is probably not that great for the working class. Thus bringing in a large number of working-class/poor immigrants has been an enormous mistake. What most people find difficult to realize is that the working class and the elites are quite fundamentally different. That Machiavelli recognized this fact is probably the main reason he is so hated. Few people like the idea that the masses and the elites should live by different rules; even those who tend towards this belief have a hard time admitting it, even to themselves.
The elites will always tend towards anti-racism and internationalism, because they identify more with the elite of other races and nations than the common people of their own race and nation. Yet the masses tend to identify with their own race and nation. Of course there are elites (like some writers at Majority Rights, for example) who have a very populist worldview. This is and always will be the distinct minority, however.
Unfortunately, many elites have bought into their own propaganda about why they support anti-racism. Most claim to do so because of some twisted idea of social justice, or yet more perverse, because they believe everyone is literally the same. Few admit to the real reason, that is that elites identify with other elites generally regardless of ethnicity.
As an example of the divergence of elite and non-elite behavior, it is quite clear from reading The Natural History of Alcoholism that the elites (College sample) deal rather differently with alcohol problems than the common man (Core City sample). Even Vaillant (the author), who tends to be a scientific thinker, only hints at this reality, though it is quite clear from the data he presents. To say outright "12 Step ideology works for the common man but not for elites" would offend both social conservatives and blank slaters, thus he never quite says such a thing explicitly. Both the pro- and anti-12 step crowds say that 12-step ideology is good or bad for everyone, rather than admitting the reality that it is good for some [those who grew up with working-class values] and bad for others [most of the elites]. In any case, I do not think Machiavelli would have been at all surprised by these findings.
Nazi racial science was almost all ideologically driven pap. Also, prowess in the physical sciences is no guarantee of sensibility in the life sciences or human sciences. More generally, any science that might touch on human behavior fared very badly in all totalitarian regimes. On a related but slightly off-topic note, arguing that one totalitarian regime was better or worse than another is mostly a pointless exercise.
One can admit the reality that there are (on average) some racial differences in non-superficial traits, and that human beings tend towards tribalism, without buying into the nonsense that the Nazis pushed. People of different races are almost as similar as people of the same race: even by The Bell Curve's statistics, only about 10 to 15 percent of variation in IQ is between racial groups.
@MacSweeney
For all their IQ points, the Jews don't seem to be very creative, even in modern times. Their music and comedy are rather formulaic. I mean, Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, crazy Lenny Bernstein. Meanwhile, working class Anglo Saxons make truly imaginative music. Nearly all modern comedy is derived from Monty Python. Take my wife, please.
"Some scientists say it has such racist implications it's unworthy of consideration."
Then these people are not, by definition, scientists.
"it always amazes me that people take for granted that humans are smarter than dogs, gorillas, tapeworms and beetles"
This is a common argument, but somewhat specious.
First of all, there is, in my humble opinion, no dog, gorilla, tapeworm or beetle that is smarter than you are. There are, however, as much as you would care to deny it, almost certainly blacks and other minorities that are.
Additionally, there is probably no tapeworm as smart as a beetle, no beetle that is as smart as a dog, and no dog that is as smart as a gorilla. Don't quote me on this, I'm not an animal biologist.
Thirdly, dog breeds, for instance were bred for a specific purpose and this accounts for much of the difference in physiology and behavior. There is not one single Bloodhound who can compete in a Greyound race, Greyhound who can compete in the Iditarod or Malamute who can be a competent drug sniffing dog. There are, conversely, blacks in NASA, Mestizos in the NBA and White Jazz musicians.
As Appius Claudius Secus said, "Every man is the fashioner of his own fortune."
In this life, or the next.
For all their IQ points, the Jews don't seem to be very creative, even in modern times. Their music and comedy are rather formulaic. I mean, Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, crazy Lenny Bernstein.That's just silly.
No further comment.
It is amazing how much many peoples' reasoning about model minorities today resembles the reasoning of Hitler in Mein Kampf about Jews. This is not to say that the idea of East Asians, South Asians, Jews, and high-IQ Amerinds and blacks are less creative than white gentiles* is necessarily false, but it is certainly suspicious. Moreover, the "everyone doing better than me is a cheat and everyone doing worse is a bum" idea seems to be as old as time, and is always exploited by demagogues.
*Yes I know that the Ashkenazim are technically non-European, but the Ashkenazim are closely related to Europeans, mixed with Europeans, and are socially considered to be white. Also, I doubt that any DNA test commercially available today could distinguish Jews from European whites, especially if we are talking (say) 25% Ashkenazim/75% Euro vs. ~100% Euro.
"Truth said...
This is a common argument, but somewhat specious."
And "Truth" knows about specious arguments - he's made a lot of them.
The point is about numbers - the distribution of a given sample, not any one element of it. Are there some blacks who are as smart as or smarter than any given white person? Sure, very likely. But not as many (either in absolute terms or per capita) as there are whites who meet that same criterion.
"There are, conversely, blacks in NASA, Mestizos in the NBA and White Jazz musicians."
There are a lot of black affirmative action hires who work for NASA. It's a government agency.
"As Appius Claudius Secus said, "Every man is the fashioner of his own fortune.""
A worthwhile sentiment and a good guide to living one's life. Useful, if not actually true (it isn't). I just wish that more blacks lived by it rather than just whining about racism.
Hey, did y'all know that Jews are the world's leading eugenicists (the world's ONLY official eugenicists?) nowadays? ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim
"For all their IQ points, the Jews don't seem to be very creative, even in modern times."
Very true - because of their rootless status as wanderers for the past 2,000 or so years, Jews have generally become culture imitators rather than culture creators.
Even early prominent Zionists realized this; some quotes:
+ "Exile is one with utter dependence - in material things, in politics and culture, in ethics and intellect, and they must be dependent who are an alien minority, who have no Homeland and are separated from their origins, from the soil and labor, from economic creativity. So we must become the captains of our fortunes, we must become independent - not only in politics and economy but in spirit, feeling and will." - David Ben-Gurion
+ "We [Jews] are a parasitic people. We have no roots in the soil, there is no ground beneath our feet. And we are parasites not only in an economic sense, but in spirit, in thought, in poetry, in literature, and in our virtues, our ideals, our higher human aspirations. Every alien movement sweeps us along, every wind in the world carries us. We in ourselves are almost non-existent, so of course we are nothing in the eyes of other people either." - Zionist A. D. Gordon
Quotes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negation_of_the_Diaspora
O'Brien: "Also, I doubt that any DNA test commercially available today could distinguish Jews from European whites, especially if we are talking (say) 25% Ashkenazim/75% Euro vs. ~100% Euro."
Not true - modern genetic testing can now discern if a person is 100% Ashkenazi, 75%, 50%, 25%, etc...and all people with ANY Ashkenazi ancestry test as genetically separate from European Whites; check out the science, paying especially close attention to the charts/graphs: http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/01/how_ashkenazi_jewish_are_you.php
O'Brien:
Yeah, the whole line of "well, maybe they have higher IQs, but they're not creative" always strikes me as the same kind of rationalization as you see from liberals when discussing the black/white IQ difference. It's true that IQ doesn't measure everything important (or even most important things), but that doesn't mean that creativity is going to happen to be concentrated in the group with a lower IQ in just such a way as to balance everything out.
Along with that, I don't see how anyone can hold to the line about Jews not being creative, given their enormous role in US media culture. Similarly, the old line that East Asians could copy European technology but not really innovate probably looked a little bit plausible in 1965, but not now.
The reason to look at IQ scores, genetics, adoption studies, personality test statistics, and all the rest, is to see the world as it is. The world doesn't exist to make you happy, to re-enforce your dearly held beliefs or to fulfill your fervent hopes, any more than it exists to re-enforce the beliefs of everyone-is-equal liberals. Trying to hammer reality into something more palatable with these rationalizations is like blinding yourself.
"A worthwhile sentiment and a good guide to living one's life. Useful, if not actually true (it isn't). I just wish that more blacks lived by it rather than just whining about racism."
It is true if you understand the way quantum philosophy works. Can everyone be a nuclear physicist? No, but people who don't have that level of intellect have no interest whatsoever in being nuclear physicists. They don't comprehend it, find it boring, and it is too far out of the scale of possibility for them to imagine.
A man of lesser intellect may like being outdoors, so he will fashion the forutne of doing landscaping, he may like people, so he will be a shift manager at Wal Mart, etc. What is significant, according to Secus it that what you put into life is what you get out of it. The average black, Hisapnic or Arab is not intelligent enough to be an open heart surgeon; guess what, neither is the average white and neither are you.
As for the "crying racism" thing. I think that you should read the posts here a little more thoroughly . I would estimate that a quarter of the posts here touch upon anti-white racism and the "dat jes' de man holdin' us down" line of thinking, do your own research, you'll see it. Human beings are 99.8% similar and .2% different and in the aggregate winners win, losers whine.
I'm a bit surprised at all this discussion. I thought it was generally accepted that Cochran was right about Ashkenazi IQ. His controversial idea is his germ theory of homosexuality. I happen to believe he's right about gayness also but I'll admit he could very well be wrong. However the Jewish IQ notion seems pretty firmly established.
If you don't subscribe to Cochran's theory how do you explain Jewish accomplishment? For a number of years I thought Ashkenazi Jews went through an evolutionary bottleneck in the late fourteenth century during which time genetic drift created certain IQ favorable genes and the low population size allowed those mutaions to get a foothold.
That seemed plausible to me at the time but ever since then Cochran has been piling up the evidence in favor of his selective advantage mechanism. After reading his book I think he's right. That means his theory is the only one still plausible.
Cochran's explanation is no longer an edgy far-out theory. Its the new conventional wisdom.
Not true - modern genetic testing can now discern if a person is 100% Ashkenazi, 75%, 50%, 25%, etc...and all people with ANY Ashkenazi ancestry test as genetically separate from European WhitesI stand corrected. Though my guess is that either carefully selected or a large number of DNA polymorphisms were used; the overall genetic distance between Ashkenazis and Euros is quite small, compared say, to Euros and East Asians.
K wrote:
[b][i]Neil Risch... who finds the matter so offensive he can barely discuss it without raising his voice. [/i] What kind of person refuses to believe something is true for the sole reason that it's unpleasant? How can you trust any conclusion reached by such a person? [/b]
-----------------------------
Just because Neil Risch doesn't want to talk about it doesn't mean he thinks it isn't true. Maybe he is just pragmatic. After all, what good can come of talking about IQ difference between races? There are a lot of crazy people out there who might do very evil things with this knowledge.
Some things are true, but not useful and I'd say IQ differences between races goes in this category.
On the other hand, some things are useful even though they may not be true. For example, if a person is very ill in the hospital after having a heart attack, it might be better if they are not told of the extent of their illness, since the stress from this knowledge would make their condition worse.
Another example--parents usually believe that their own children are the most attractive and wonderful children in the world. Of course this isn't true most of the time! However, if humans were not wired up to think this way, they would abandon the little ankle-biters (or do something even worse) and the human race would die out.
Another example--some alcoholics can find recovery in 12 step programs by believing in a higher power. Even if there is no higher power, just believing there is can sometimes help control alcoholism.
There are a lot of bad things about humans. Humans can be selfish and violent and brutal. But if you dwelt on these bad things and ignored all the positive things many of us would become so depressed that we couldn't carry on.
Why do so many of you dwell so much on the IQ/race business? As far as I can tell, it can do no good, but much harm. Its potential to do harm is not limited to giving fuel to crazy white supremists. It might make universities so gun-shy that other, really useful genetic studies may be considered taboo. For example, it may be difficult to get funding for research on the genetic basis for alcoholism or other mental disorders. Yet very likely the key to treating these disorders lies in genetic discoveries.
So please, quit harping on the IQ thing. You can't cure stupid, so the whole thing is pointless and mean-spirited.
Truth wrote:
A man of lesser intellect may like being outdoors, so he will fashion the forutne of doing landscaping, he may like people, so he will be a shift manager at Wal Mart, etc.
------------------------------
So after the Chinese take over North America the white people can work as landscapers and shift managers at Walmart. Hell, its already happening in Vancouver.
"Truth said...
It is true if you understand the way quantum philosophy works."
I understand Quantum Mechanics just fine - almost certainly better than you do. The term "Quantum Philosophy" is just pseudo-intellectual horseshit. Deepak Chopra's books are not a good guide to physics.
"The average black, Hisapnic or Arab is not intelligent enough to be an open heart surgeon; guess what, neither is the average white and neither are you."
Actually, I am. I have neither the dexterity nor the temperament for it though. And those are at least as important.
It's really hard to take you seriously, Truth, given the nonsense you spout, the fact that you refer to yourself as "Truth", and your incessant and comical bragadaccio - a trait which is dismally typical among black men - bragadaccio that is usually unjustified by any real accomplishments.
Thirdly, dog breeds, for instance were bred for a specific purpose and this accounts for much of the difference in physiology and behavior.No, the breeding accounts for it, not the purpose. And humans have subjected themselves to similar pressures.
There is not one single Bloodhound who can compete in a Greyound race, Greyhound who can compete in the Iditarod or Malamute who can be a competent drug sniffing dog. There are, conversely, blacks in NASA, Mestizos in the NBA and White Jazz musicians.You seem to be implying that the lack of overlap makes for some fundamental distinction, but I'm not seeing it.
And there are whippets who can compete with greyhounds, I suppose. Not that I know what difference this makes, since I don't even know what your point is. I'm getting quite used to that state of affairs, though.
As Appius Claudius Secus said, "Every man is the fashioner of his own fortune."I bet he was selling something.
" Anonymous said...
Just because Neil Risch doesn't want to talk about it doesn't mean he thinks it isn't true. Maybe he is just pragmatic. After all, what good can come of talking about IQ difference between races? There are a lot of crazy people out there who might do very evil things with this knowledge."
There are a lot of crazy people out there who do evil things by denying this knowledge. Like denying jobs to the most qualified applicants. Like promoting incapable people to positions of responsibility. Like promoting hatred of whites by blacks, because an all-pervasive societal racism is the only allowed explanation of black's relative backwardness when other explanations are ruled off-limits.
I agree with you that it would be wrong to use such knowledge to gain advantage over others, or use it to denigrate and humilitate people. But I believe that I should be allowed to observe the world and draw conclusions from it without being treated like a pariah, simply for putting two and two together.
The average black, Hisapnic or Arab is not intelligent enough to be an open heart surgeon; guess what, neither is the average white and neither are you.The average black, mestizo, or Arab isn't intelligent enough to be an average member of a first world nation, either. The average white is.
Why do so many of you dwell so much on the IQ/race business? As far as I can tell, it can do no good, but much harm.I'll keep it short, so you'll have a harder time whistling past the graveyard.
Whites stand accused of responsibility for so-called "black failure." Race realism vis-a-vis IQ is part of the defense (and consequently, a moral duty of white men).
Oh btw, I find your whole line of argumentation disingenuous, bordering on transparently so.
Anonymous said,
"Some things are true, but not useful and I'd say IQ differences between races goes in this category."
Man, are you freaking dense or what?
For years doctors couldn't figure out why certain blood pressure medications weren't working as they should on their black patients. Who knows how many patients were lost or how their health suffered because researchers assumed that there were no racial differences in how people reacted to a medication. It took years for doctors, anecdotally sharing stories with their colleagues, to realize it wasn't just their black patients who weren't responding to prescription therapy as they might have expected.
Yeah. Racial differences. Black respond better to different medications. Women respond differently than men.
I can hear you saying, "Yeah, that's different. Knowing there are racial differences in response to medications is a good thing, but what good can come from knowing about group differences in IQ"?
I repeat. Are you dense?
Our educational system is in tatters. Any knowledge about cognition would help educators in their struggles to help people learn.
Can this be used by idiots? Sure. Can it be used productively? YES! Do you wish to stop all studies of how humans learn or how they differ in how they learn? Should we stop all studies of the differences in how girls learn as opposed to how boys learn, how dyslexic kids learn vs. how non-dyslexic kids learn, how...ah, why go on with you. You evidently don't believe that 1)knowledge is good and you aren't creative enough to be able to see that 2) there are many ways the application of such knowledge can be used for the betterment of mankind.
I'm a Seinfeld fan. He and his writers were brilliant and creative about the mundane world; I sit through some of his shows in awe of how much angst and irony is crammed into 25 hilarious minutes. Carl Reiner (Dick van Dyke show, etc.) received the Mark Twain humorist award a few years ago and Seinfeld was there offering some commentary, public and on-stage. so what did he say -- mind you, this was the Mark Twain award, given and promoted by people who, I would think, are devoted Twain fans -- well, Jerry said, "Carl Reiner is a lot funnier than Mark Twain." Aside from the fact that Twain and Reiner had totally different, not really comparable styles and lived in different worlds, Seinfeld's remark was rude.
Twain's "comedy" was more of a panoramic overview of americana and its orgins and its ironies. Reiner's humor machine guns jokes at you. He was "funnier" in a way, if you want some belly laughs, but I don't think I'd want to read him for hours at a time.
Nevertheless, Jews have shown plenty of creativity--Stanley Kubrick anybody? just to name one? Formulaic? All cultures have formulas that recognizable. I watch BBC and there are "formulas' that are different from American tv.
"Some things are true, but not useful and I'd say IQ differences between races goes in this category."
This has been addressed many times here. The reason it needs to be acknowledged is because people(whites mostly, teachers, etc.) are being unjustly blamed for the failures of blacks. As long as blacks don't do well, it's whites' fault, and we'll need Affirmative Action forever.
It's already a fact that black females make more than white females with comparable education and qualifications. The workplace is quick to affirm the least show of intelligence from them beyond what they would get if they were white, yet their underperformance continues to be blamed on the (white) system.
"You seem to be implying that the lack of overlap makes for some fundamental distinction, but I'm not seeing it"
The distinction being that dogs don't have a great interest in self improvement, people, by nature do. A Bloodhound would never be able to compete with a Greyhound, but if he chose to run sprints everyday, be timed, eat a fat free diet, etc,; he might catch the neighborhood German Sheppard. Dogs do not have self awareness, this makes all of the difference in the world.
This Svigor, is half the reason why Ronald McNair was able to earn a PHD from MIT, a 5th degree black belt, and become a concerto quality musician...all at the same time (the other half is that when you clicked that link your first thought was "affirmative action" instead of "good job").
But this is not the whole story: Nature dictates that the Greyhound beats the Bloodhound 100 times out of 100, yet if nurture is thrown in and the owner of said greyhound mangles his two front legs with a saber saw, guess who wins the race?
See, if you discard completely linear thinking and open yourself to a solar-system of possibilities, my posts are not that esoteric.
PS: A whippet is a dog bred for speed just as a Greyhound so it really is a distinction without a difference. Show me a whippet that can win a pit-bull fight and I'll pat you on the back.
As to the point of whether we should study IQ differences or not, this is more stifled, linear thinking; there should be some people studying linear differences, there should be others protesting this in the streets, there should be others reporting it, there should be others at stormfront.org twisting and manipulating the information, and yet others manufacturing the computers that the scientists used to study racial differences. This is being human and they should all be embraced and encouraged.
Every man is the fashioner of his own fortune.
"It's already a fact that black females make more than white females with comparable education and qualifications."
Yes, because white women get married and take time off to raise their kids, black women don't and work directly before and after pregnancy. Is this really so controversial?
Almost all knowledge can be used for ill, but that doesn't mean we should ban knowledge.
The more we learn about cognition, the better. Also, we have to remember that most new things are learned when a reseacher is looking for one thing and comes across another accidentally. If you determine not to investigate one subject, who knows what and how many discoveries you miss out on.
Do you know how long it took educators to find out that 1/3 of their students learned best auditorily rather than visually? That knowledge alone, applied properly by teachers in the primary grades, has made a tremendous difference in the ability to learn for millions of kids.
To those of you who think it is good to study and publicize IQ differences between races--are you sure you have thought this through?
You say that poor performance of blacks is blamed unfairly on racisim, and I believe you, and I'm sure this is causing some problems. But have you thought about the problems that would be caused by telling the black people that they are stupider than the white people? People will NOT accept this meekly. It would be like pouring gasoline on fire. Racism in both directions would explode. You just can't go around saying this sort of thing and expect to have a civil society where people of different races live and work along side one another. If you are not black, can't you try to put yourself in their place by imagining what it would be like to have another race (who dominate the country you live in) telling you that your race is stupir and most of your children should be content to work at Walmart or as landscapers? Can't you imagine how outraged you would feel, and how you might start to hate the dominant race?
I am a white person, and where I live in Canada there are few black people. However, there are a LOT of people from China. The percentage of Chinese students at the universities is much higher than the percentage of Chinese in the general population. We don't have any sort of affirmative action in Canada. The Chinese especially dominate in competative fields such as medicine. I don't feel particularly threatened by this, but if they were running the country and telling white people that they are stupider than Chinese (which may well be true) it would NOT be pleasant.
Someone criticizing my earlier post said that I must lack imagination. Rather I think it is you who lack imagination.
"Yes, because white women get married and take time off to raise their kids, black women don't and work directly before and after pregnancy. Is this really so controversial?Yes, because white women get married and take time off to raise their kids, black women don't and work directly before and after pregnancy. Is this really so controversial?"
Most of the white women vying for the kinds of jobs held by black women are working class or perhaps "middle", often red necky types, to use a prejorative, but one which people "get." These days they are not the women who get to stay home with the kids. I know few white women who have been able to do that and the white illegitimacy rate is now something like 30% among non-college educated women.
Actually many of the white, under-achiever cases I see are childless or the kids are long grown and on their own. I've seen black secretaries/medical receptionists, etc., with bad attitudes and who make constant mistakes, rewarded with substantial bonuses by their bosses. The only reason I can figure is that the bosses want to keep them happy. Good luck--these bonuses only seem to increase these ladies' arrogance and bad attitudes. Natually there are whites with terrible attitudes, but they don't get away with them as much. Blacks seem unaware of how much they get away with in the workplace compared to whites. They are expected to perform more or less at an adolescent level. A major DC law firm was educational on that point.
Very few of the white women in the surveys I've looked at, or known personally, had the luxury of taking time off, having children, or even being married. You are very naive--or having seen some of your comments, simply intransigent--if you think affirmative action is not the major reason for most black progress. Employers are so desperate not to get some "race" suit howling on their backs that any black person with any apparent capacity gets the royal treatment, even though the person would only be considered so-so if she or he were any other race. Occasionally it's worth it.
At one government agency, a black woman with known mental problems takes off for months at a time and is accepted back no questions asked, is the only one to have her own office because no one can work with her, and cries "racism" at whites who are treating her exactly as they treat everyone else. One white lady has a habit of whistling to get the attention of the person she wants to talk to as she approaches them. Not too bright, but not offensive to anyone else. The black lady shouted something about not being a dog and caused a major rucus. The whistler was shocked and dismayed and forced to "apologize" for freaking nothing. Jeez. And they wonder why, deep down, we don't want them around.
Since really exceptional productivity and brilliance is extremely rare from blacks (sorry, just a fact), the ones who perform reasonably well and also have a good attitude and team spirit, are worth their weight in gold to desperate employers with quotas to meet. This is what happens. I've worked in DOJ, other government agencies, private enterprise, and universities. I have contacts in major law firms. This is phenomenon all whites know about, but rarely admit.
Actually, I am.Yeah, how'd I gloss over that one? What's the rough IQ cutoff for an open-heart surgeon?
"I've seen black secretaries/medical receptionists, etc., with bad attitudes and who make constant mistakes, rewarded with substantial bonuses by their bosses. The only reason I can figure is that the bosses want to keep them happy... Natually there are whites with terrible attitudes, but they don't get away with them as much.
And this is coming from a totally non-biased viewpoint of course.
BTW in response to your probably apocryphal story, I would take offense to someone whistling at me also; as I believe would most of the other posters here. I don't necessarily feel that being called by my name, which is only two syllables, is asking too much.
Yeah the whistling thing stuck out at me too. Your stories ring true, but I wouldn't let anyone whistle at me that way. Wouldn't make a ruckus over it, I'd just tell her I didn't appreciate it.
"and your incessant and comical bragadaccio - a trait which is dismally typical among black men - bragadaccio that is usually unjustified by any real accomplishments."
I got you to respond to me doesn't that count for anything, sport?
"BTW in response to your probably apocryphal story, I would take offense to someone whistling at me also; BTW in response to your probably apocryphal story, I would take offense to someone whistling at me also; "
It is not apocryphal. It is a very mild case of black harrassment i've noticed in the workplace for many, many years. Of course I have had good working relationships with blacks as well, but some places are worse than others.
I could tell a better story if I wanted to be apocryphal. In fact I could tell a better/worse story if I merely recounted another true one.
It happened just last week in a government agency.
The person who whistled is a bit of dingbat but she does this with everybody and the accuser knows it. Tomorrow apparently, the whole floor must go to some sort of sensitivity seminar.
I have heard extraordinarily insulting comments from blacks about whites and the whites never make a ruckus. They just let it go.
It's like we're being ruled by a band of children who are being humored because they are 6ft. tall, armed and dangerous.
This is not my "biased" pov. It happens so often and so frequently and so pervasively that for whites it's just white noise. I mean black noise.
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