Oh, yeah! I've been thinking about this since our interview in late April. Over the past five years, I've read articles by different people about Jewish IQ. But when you brought up Tay-Sachs, you explained how it relates to Jewish intelligence. I knew Jews could have Tay-Sachs, but I didn't realize it was thought to have a positive influence on intelligence.
"Cognitive evolution likely continued and intensified as the Ashkenazi population expanded more than a hundred-fold between the 15th and 19th centuries, an expansion mirroring that of Western Europe’s middle class and likely driven by the same cause — the shift from feudalism to a more dynamic market economy.30
The Ashkenazi cognitive advantage may therefore be relatively recent."
It seems like Jews were involved in more dynamic market economy niches long before the shift away from feudalism, such as international trade and moneylending. The Radhanites for example were medieval Jewish traders who facilitated an international trading network that extended from Western Europe to the Mideast and Far East. The Radhanites appear to have predated the clear formation of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim as distinct communities, and may have been ancestral to both.
Also Aaron of Lincoln was a Jewish moneylender who was the wealthiest man in 12th century England. And Jewish merchants and moneylenders accompanied the Normans in the conquest of England and the British Isles, serving as financiers and advisors. The Norman conquest of Ireland in the 12th century was financed by an English Jew.
This preponderance and success in sophisticated market economy activity in a medieval, feudal environment would appear to suggest that Jewish specialization and success in such activity was not merely the product of centuries of living in a post-feudal, European market economic environment, but predates it.
The standard explanation is that Christian European discrimination and prohibition of Jews from engaging in feudal agriculture forced them into market activity and moneylending, but that wouldn't be sufficient to explain things such as a sophisticated international trading network and being the wealthiest person in the Medieval period.
It seems Jews had both the inclination and success in dynamic market economy activity long before being exposed to the post feudal European market economy. And their cultural traditions suggest this as well, as for example in the Old Testament we see injunctions about moneylending to out-groups.
"It seems like Jews were involved in more dynamic market economy niches long before the shift away from feudalism"
Dynamic? Not in the least! In Western Europe before the 15th century, GDP per capita growth averaged 0.05% to 0.15% per year. Growth rates were even lower and remained low in the Middle East and North Africa.
Moreover, most of this growth was embedded in static economic relationships that left little room for competition and flexibility. The emphasis was on dealing with loyal, trustworthy actors, typically relatives and longtime friends. In fact, most economic activity took place within the family or among close kin.
You speak at great length about Jews having long been market-oriented. Undoubtedly, they were. But the market economy accounted for only a tiny slice of all economic activity during feudal times. It was a side show.
Right, the feudal economy overall obviously couldn't be characterized as "dynamic." I was using it to describe the niches I cited relative to simple feudal agriculture.
And while in a technical sense these activities may have been a sideshow in terms of say overall GDP, in another sense they did generate some of the wealthiest men of their day and close relationships with feudal elites.
I think the argument you present of post-feudal economic activity selecting for modern intelligence among Jews is reasonable. I brought up my examples because they were pre-modern examples of the same sort of phenomena that the post-feudal market selection hypothesis is used to explain. People will explain contemporary Jewish wealth, overrepresentation in finance, close political and economic ties to government elites, etc. with the post-feudal market selection argument. But the examples I cite may suggest that these aren't merely contemporary phenomena.
I know Gregory Cochran has tended to dismiss or ignore such examples in the past. I think they would indicate, if not a pre-modern cognitive advantage or the same degree of a cognitive advantage as among contemporary Jews, perhaps other behavioral inclinations or traits that may contribute to producing the phenomena that the post-feudal market selection argument is typically exclusively used to explain. Theorizing about these other traits is very controversial and politically incorrect. There are generally only 2 acceptable positions: the left wing politically correct view is that the long history of anti-Semitic persecution and discrimination forced Jews to work extra hard. The right wing politically correct view is that Jews underwent natural selection in modern times for higher intelligence and essentially any and all of their social and behavioral phenomena is simply due to higher intelligence.
I substantially agree with you. Yes, there was selection for cognitive ability among Ashkenazim (and among Jews in general) even before the end of feudalism in Europe. But I would argue that this selection was weaker or, to be more exact, operated within a narrower range.
"In contrast, most Ashkenazi Jews were middle-class, in the sense of directly participating in the market economy as buyers and sellers."
Are you sure about that? After reading Singer and other Jewish writers' descriptions, I got the idea that there quite a few proletarian Jews in. the shtetls, with the very poorest sometime leaving the Jewish communities altogether. On the other hand, the richest and most successful families had more children. Wouldn't Gregory Clark's argument come into play here?
The best quantitative evidence comes from the Russian Empire's 1897 census, which covered much of the former Polish-Lithuanian territory. In general, it found the following:
- a relatively small percentage worked in agriculture
- large numbers were in trade and commerce.
- many worked as artisans and craftsmen.
- some served as leaseholders, tavern keepers, tax farmers, estate managers, or intermediaries between nobles and peasants.
- significant numbers were employed in religious, educational, and communal institutions.
I'm using the term "middle-class" here in a broad sense, i.e., people who derived their income directly from the market economy (as opposed to pre-capitalist relations like subsistence farming, serfdom, etc.).
In my research on Tay-Sachs among French Canadians, I found that the census under-estimated participation in the market economy. Many people reported that they were "farmers" — even though their farming was little more than subsistence. But it was more prestigious for them to say they were farmers because it meant that they owned land. Being an innkeeper, for instance, was less prestigious, so the number of innkeepers was underreported.
"There is extensive evidence of Jewish polygamy, or more precisely -- polygyny, throughout history up to and even after the proscription by Rabbi Gershom circa 1000AD. Moreover the ecologically imposed monogamy of northern Europe had long since given way to socially imposed monogamy of Christianity by the time the Ashkenazim definitively appear some hundreds of years before Gershom. The reason for this change from ecological to social imposition of monogamy can be easily seen in the change from monogamy to polygyny that characterizes the transition from hunter gatherer to agricultural societies: Caloric availability of agriculture removes the ecological restraints on polygyny.
How much more does the presence of urban centers, the specialized habitat of the Ashkenazim, concentrate caloric availability and hence the ecological support for polygyny?
The answer: For elites -- at least an order of magnitude.
Grain stores for transport and trade are concentrated most in urban centers hence the opportunity for elites to benefit from caloric availability far more than even neolithic farmers such as the Bantu's displacing the Saan and other hunter gatherers with a polygynous culture. (See Destro-Bisol G, Donati F, Coia V et al: Variation of female and male lineages in Sub-Saharan populations: the importance of sociocultural factors. Mol Biol Evol 2004; 21: 1673– 1682.)
Is it known what the harem sizes tended to be prior to the Ashkenazim proscription on polygynous practices?
Is it known over what time the Ashkenazim practiced polygyny among northern Europeans?
Is it known that they actually ceased practicing de facto polygyny (we must not lightly discount routes to fertility other than marriage) when they said? Although it is easy to accuse indigenous northern Europeans of mere hysteria, a common theme in antisemitism has been concern about one-way gene flow out of the Ashkenazim while maintaining the Ashkenazim lineages. How do we verify that this was mere hysteria rather than a reaction to de facto polygyny among the Ashkenazim?
Fortunately, we don't need to engage in debate of these questions -- we can answer them with a generalization of the technique used by Michael J. Wade and Stephen M. Schuster in Estimating the Strength of Sexual Selection from Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Diversity (Evolution, 58(7), 2004, pp. 1613–1616). The generalization revolves around the fact that we know the mutation rate for the Y-Chromosome is high enough that we have reasonable temporal resolution on when various mutations appeared. From that we can have some idea of what the reproductive harem sizes were of the Ashkenazim elites through various points of time."
It was unusual for a man to have more than three wives. Jewish law required a husband to support all his wives financially. Maintaining multiple households was expensive, making polygyny largely an option for wealthier men.
There is also the issue of male longevity. The typical pattern was for a man to take a second wife when his first wife began to lose her charms, and then a third wife when the second wife was no longer young. Harems were unusual, even among Muslims, and normally confined to very powerful men.
My great-great-great grandfather had three wives in the course of his life, and he was quite old by the time he got to wife #3.
"Is it known over what time the Ashkenazim practiced polygyny among northern Europeans?"
The year 1000 is close to the beginning of the Ashkenazim. Yes, we have evidence of Jews in Cologne from 321, but the actual Rhineland communities began to form in the 10th and 11th centuries, especially in the cities of Mainz (Magenza), Worms (Warmaisa), and Speyer (Shpira), collectively known as the ShUM communities.
"Is it known that they actually ceased practicing de facto polygyny (we must not lightly discount routes to fertility other than marriage) when they said?"
Polygyny wasn't de facto. It was de jure. Biblical and Talmudic law allowed a man to have multiple wives, and many biblical figures are described as doing so. The prohibition associated with Rabbeinu Gershom around the year 1000 reversed a previously permitted practice for Ashkenazi Jews.
In theory, this question could be resolved by comparing Y-chromosome diversity to mtDNA diversity. But would this method have sufficient power to distinguish between the pre-1000 and post-1000 periods?
I agree. It's not just knowledge. It's a pro-active mindset — a willingness to create new economic relationships without waiting for things to happen on their own.
Kevin MacDonald notes that, when controlled by Intelligence, Jews still over-represent Whites in high-status fields, earn more etc., etc., etc. Dr MacDonald postulates Jews being high(er) in Ethnocentrism/In-Group Favouritism explains the gap.
Nathan Cofnas, and I agree with him, replies that there's no reliable evidence for that, plus, on the other hand, Jews out-marry at such great rates: hence, not consistent with high(er) Ethnic Nepotism.
Dr Cofnas, also, hints at "Personality Differences" between Jews and Gentiles to explain the gap neatly.
Personally, what fascinates me the most is Emil Kirkegaard's hypothesis that: Jews are high(er) in mental disorders/illnesses, hence that (indirectly) makes them more open to "think outside-the-box" – so, the gap is clarified.
Anyway... What are Dr Frost's thoughts on Jewish "mentally ill" brain profile to account for the "Personality Differences"?
A company with a small early lead attracts more customers, capital, and talent, thus widening the gap over time.
Related concepts include cumulative advantage, positive feedback loop, compound growth, and winner-take-all situations.
Of course, this isn’t Kevin’s argument. He has argued that Jewish Americans use ethnic networking to maximize their advantage within various American institutions. But this networking has its down side. Bernie Madoff, for instance, leveraged his ethnic identity to create a Ponzi scheme within the Jewish community, which ultimately suffered a heavy financial loss.
In summary, I would say:
Yes, the cognitive advantage doesn’t fully explain the real-world advantage.
Most of the unaccounted advantage is due to the natural tendency of a small advantage to snowball into a bigger one.
There is also conscious ethnic networking, where appeals to Jewish identity are used to mobilize support for various projects. These projects, however, can turn sour and collapse because they often require more losers than winners even among project supporters. Support for Israel seems to be the one big project that has mobilized the most ethnic support over the longest span of time.
There is a higher incidence of mental disorders among Ashkenazi Jews, but this is a side effect of selection acting on a limited supply of intelligence-boosting alleles. Typically, these disorders are harmful in the homozygous state while being beneficial in the heterozygous state.
"There is a higher incidence of mental disorders among Ashkenazi Jews,"
If Kirkegaard is correct that such "mental disorders" cause Jews to reason "in unusual and novel ways", hence more likely to crack problems no-one else could've... that could, in turn, corroborate Edward Dutton's hypothesis on "clever sillies": ivory-tower academics who, despite high IQ, endorse utterly stupid ideas like Wealth Redistribution and the like...
After all, being able to reason "in unusual and novel ways" is a double-edged sword – that "super-power" has an equal likelihood of inducing one to endorse absolute nonsense, as you're so low in primordial instincts.
(However, unless I'm mistaken, I read that IQ as it goes up correlates with better "mental health"; so I've no idea how all of that could compute without contradiction...)
"Support for Israel seems to be the one big project that has mobilized the most ethnic support over the longest span of time."
Dr Cofnas noted, in one of his papers on the subject, that Neo-Conservatism is "the best-case scenario" where Dr MacDonald's theory *might* work...
I truly hope Dr Cofnas addresses Neo-Conservatism viewed as "a group evolutionary strategy", eventually!
He didn't do so because, originally, "The Culture of Critique" does not deal with it at all: I think Dr MacDonald included a chapter on Neo-Conservatism in some later edition, if I remember correctly...
Great analysis of the Ashkenazi/IQ issue, with copious notes. This topic interests me. Thanks.
"Many such alleles have been identified for IQ, with more remaining to be found, but we know enough of them to estimate the mean IQ of a population."
It is intriguing to surmise the level of intelligence a person could attain if they had all the positive intelligence alleles.
"These polygenic scores are usually based on alleles associated with differences in educational attainment — a reasonable proxy for IQ."
I believe we have discussed this before. I contend that educational attainment is becoming a less reasonable proxy for IQ, thanks to lower standards for higher education admissions and graduation.
"Also, current IQ tests are often biased in favor of verbal intelligence, which contributes disproportionately to Ashkenazi IQ.32"
This fact has confounded me. Why hasn't the bias been neutralized?
"I contend that educational attainment is becoming a less reasonable proxy for IQ"
This will become a problem for future iterations of the EA polygenic score (following EA3 and EA4). For the coding of EA3, Lee et al. (2018) did look at the younger participants and found that their data did not significantly affect the overall results.
"Why hasn't the bias been neutralized?"
We have. There are tests for non-verbal IQ intelligence. It's just that the existing literature includes findings from tests for verbal intelligence.
"This will become a problem for future iterations of the EA polygenic score (following EA3 and EA4)."
I wasn't very clear; I meant for future proxy purposes.
"We have. There are tests for non-verbal IQ intelligence. It's just that the existing literature includes findings from tests for verbal intelligence."
I don't follow your reasoning. EA3 is not based on people who are currently in the educational system (the same goes for EA4). The data had been collected before 2018 from people who had already completed their education. Most, in fact, were middle-aged or even elderly at the time of collection.
Oh, yeah! I've been thinking about this since our interview in late April. Over the past five years, I've read articles by different people about Jewish IQ. But when you brought up Tay-Sachs, you explained how it relates to Jewish intelligence. I knew Jews could have Tay-Sachs, but I didn't realize it was thought to have a positive influence on intelligence.
"Cognitive evolution likely continued and intensified as the Ashkenazi population expanded more than a hundred-fold between the 15th and 19th centuries, an expansion mirroring that of Western Europe’s middle class and likely driven by the same cause — the shift from feudalism to a more dynamic market economy.30
The Ashkenazi cognitive advantage may therefore be relatively recent."
It seems like Jews were involved in more dynamic market economy niches long before the shift away from feudalism, such as international trade and moneylending. The Radhanites for example were medieval Jewish traders who facilitated an international trading network that extended from Western Europe to the Mideast and Far East. The Radhanites appear to have predated the clear formation of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim as distinct communities, and may have been ancestral to both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanite
Also Aaron of Lincoln was a Jewish moneylender who was the wealthiest man in 12th century England. And Jewish merchants and moneylenders accompanied the Normans in the conquest of England and the British Isles, serving as financiers and advisors. The Norman conquest of Ireland in the 12th century was financed by an English Jew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_of_Lincoln
This preponderance and success in sophisticated market economy activity in a medieval, feudal environment would appear to suggest that Jewish specialization and success in such activity was not merely the product of centuries of living in a post-feudal, European market economic environment, but predates it.
The standard explanation is that Christian European discrimination and prohibition of Jews from engaging in feudal agriculture forced them into market activity and moneylending, but that wouldn't be sufficient to explain things such as a sophisticated international trading network and being the wealthiest person in the Medieval period.
It seems Jews had both the inclination and success in dynamic market economy activity long before being exposed to the post feudal European market economy. And their cultural traditions suggest this as well, as for example in the Old Testament we see injunctions about moneylending to out-groups.
"It seems like Jews were involved in more dynamic market economy niches long before the shift away from feudalism"
Dynamic? Not in the least! In Western Europe before the 15th century, GDP per capita growth averaged 0.05% to 0.15% per year. Growth rates were even lower and remained low in the Middle East and North Africa.
Moreover, most of this growth was embedded in static economic relationships that left little room for competition and flexibility. The emphasis was on dealing with loyal, trustworthy actors, typically relatives and longtime friends. In fact, most economic activity took place within the family or among close kin.
You speak at great length about Jews having long been market-oriented. Undoubtedly, they were. But the market economy accounted for only a tiny slice of all economic activity during feudal times. It was a side show.
Right, the feudal economy overall obviously couldn't be characterized as "dynamic." I was using it to describe the niches I cited relative to simple feudal agriculture.
And while in a technical sense these activities may have been a sideshow in terms of say overall GDP, in another sense they did generate some of the wealthiest men of their day and close relationships with feudal elites.
I think the argument you present of post-feudal economic activity selecting for modern intelligence among Jews is reasonable. I brought up my examples because they were pre-modern examples of the same sort of phenomena that the post-feudal market selection hypothesis is used to explain. People will explain contemporary Jewish wealth, overrepresentation in finance, close political and economic ties to government elites, etc. with the post-feudal market selection argument. But the examples I cite may suggest that these aren't merely contemporary phenomena.
I know Gregory Cochran has tended to dismiss or ignore such examples in the past. I think they would indicate, if not a pre-modern cognitive advantage or the same degree of a cognitive advantage as among contemporary Jews, perhaps other behavioral inclinations or traits that may contribute to producing the phenomena that the post-feudal market selection argument is typically exclusively used to explain. Theorizing about these other traits is very controversial and politically incorrect. There are generally only 2 acceptable positions: the left wing politically correct view is that the long history of anti-Semitic persecution and discrimination forced Jews to work extra hard. The right wing politically correct view is that Jews underwent natural selection in modern times for higher intelligence and essentially any and all of their social and behavioral phenomena is simply due to higher intelligence.
I substantially agree with you. Yes, there was selection for cognitive ability among Ashkenazim (and among Jews in general) even before the end of feudalism in Europe. But I would argue that this selection was weaker or, to be more exact, operated within a narrower range.
Thoughtful
"In contrast, most Ashkenazi Jews were middle-class, in the sense of directly participating in the market economy as buyers and sellers."
Are you sure about that? After reading Singer and other Jewish writers' descriptions, I got the idea that there quite a few proletarian Jews in. the shtetls, with the very poorest sometime leaving the Jewish communities altogether. On the other hand, the richest and most successful families had more children. Wouldn't Gregory Clark's argument come into play here?
The best quantitative evidence comes from the Russian Empire's 1897 census, which covered much of the former Polish-Lithuanian territory. In general, it found the following:
- a relatively small percentage worked in agriculture
- large numbers were in trade and commerce.
- many worked as artisans and craftsmen.
- some served as leaseholders, tavern keepers, tax farmers, estate managers, or intermediaries between nobles and peasants.
- significant numbers were employed in religious, educational, and communal institutions.
I'm using the term "middle-class" here in a broad sense, i.e., people who derived their income directly from the market economy (as opposed to pre-capitalist relations like subsistence farming, serfdom, etc.).
In my research on Tay-Sachs among French Canadians, I found that the census under-estimated participation in the market economy. Many people reported that they were "farmers" — even though their farming was little more than subsistence. But it was more prestigious for them to say they were farmers because it meant that they owned land. Being an innkeeper, for instance, was less prestigious, so the number of innkeepers was underreported.
Regarding Jewish polygamy and its proscription, this post raises some interesting questions:
https://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2005/06/ignoring-800lb-polygynous-ashkenazi.html
"There is extensive evidence of Jewish polygamy, or more precisely -- polygyny, throughout history up to and even after the proscription by Rabbi Gershom circa 1000AD. Moreover the ecologically imposed monogamy of northern Europe had long since given way to socially imposed monogamy of Christianity by the time the Ashkenazim definitively appear some hundreds of years before Gershom. The reason for this change from ecological to social imposition of monogamy can be easily seen in the change from monogamy to polygyny that characterizes the transition from hunter gatherer to agricultural societies: Caloric availability of agriculture removes the ecological restraints on polygyny.
How much more does the presence of urban centers, the specialized habitat of the Ashkenazim, concentrate caloric availability and hence the ecological support for polygyny?
The answer: For elites -- at least an order of magnitude.
Grain stores for transport and trade are concentrated most in urban centers hence the opportunity for elites to benefit from caloric availability far more than even neolithic farmers such as the Bantu's displacing the Saan and other hunter gatherers with a polygynous culture. (See Destro-Bisol G, Donati F, Coia V et al: Variation of female and male lineages in Sub-Saharan populations: the importance of sociocultural factors. Mol Biol Evol 2004; 21: 1673– 1682.)
Is it known what the harem sizes tended to be prior to the Ashkenazim proscription on polygynous practices?
Is it known over what time the Ashkenazim practiced polygyny among northern Europeans?
Is it known that they actually ceased practicing de facto polygyny (we must not lightly discount routes to fertility other than marriage) when they said? Although it is easy to accuse indigenous northern Europeans of mere hysteria, a common theme in antisemitism has been concern about one-way gene flow out of the Ashkenazim while maintaining the Ashkenazim lineages. How do we verify that this was mere hysteria rather than a reaction to de facto polygyny among the Ashkenazim?
Fortunately, we don't need to engage in debate of these questions -- we can answer them with a generalization of the technique used by Michael J. Wade and Stephen M. Schuster in Estimating the Strength of Sexual Selection from Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Diversity (Evolution, 58(7), 2004, pp. 1613–1616). The generalization revolves around the fact that we know the mutation rate for the Y-Chromosome is high enough that we have reasonable temporal resolution on when various mutations appeared. From that we can have some idea of what the reproductive harem sizes were of the Ashkenazim elites through various points of time."
It was unusual for a man to have more than three wives. Jewish law required a husband to support all his wives financially. Maintaining multiple households was expensive, making polygyny largely an option for wealthier men.
There is also the issue of male longevity. The typical pattern was for a man to take a second wife when his first wife began to lose her charms, and then a third wife when the second wife was no longer young. Harems were unusual, even among Muslims, and normally confined to very powerful men.
My great-great-great grandfather had three wives in the course of his life, and he was quite old by the time he got to wife #3.
"Is it known over what time the Ashkenazim practiced polygyny among northern Europeans?"
The year 1000 is close to the beginning of the Ashkenazim. Yes, we have evidence of Jews in Cologne from 321, but the actual Rhineland communities began to form in the 10th and 11th centuries, especially in the cities of Mainz (Magenza), Worms (Warmaisa), and Speyer (Shpira), collectively known as the ShUM communities.
"Is it known that they actually ceased practicing de facto polygyny (we must not lightly discount routes to fertility other than marriage) when they said?"
Polygyny wasn't de facto. It was de jure. Biblical and Talmudic law allowed a man to have multiple wives, and many biblical figures are described as doing so. The prohibition associated with Rabbeinu Gershom around the year 1000 reversed a previously permitted practice for Ashkenazi Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herem_of_Rabbenu_Gershom
In theory, this question could be resolved by comparing Y-chromosome diversity to mtDNA diversity. But would this method have sufficient power to distinguish between the pre-1000 and post-1000 periods?
" It now rewarded those who possessed not only marketable skills but also the ability to identify market opportunities and act on them quickly."
You have to include drive, stamina, work ethic, or whatever you want to call it.
I agree. It's not just knowledge. It's a pro-active mindset — a willingness to create new economic relationships without waiting for things to happen on their own.
Kevin MacDonald notes that, when controlled by Intelligence, Jews still over-represent Whites in high-status fields, earn more etc., etc., etc. Dr MacDonald postulates Jews being high(er) in Ethnocentrism/In-Group Favouritism explains the gap.
Nathan Cofnas, and I agree with him, replies that there's no reliable evidence for that, plus, on the other hand, Jews out-marry at such great rates: hence, not consistent with high(er) Ethnic Nepotism.
Dr Cofnas, also, hints at "Personality Differences" between Jews and Gentiles to explain the gap neatly.
Personally, what fascinates me the most is Emil Kirkegaard's hypothesis that: Jews are high(er) in mental disorders/illnesses, hence that (indirectly) makes them more open to "think outside-the-box" – so, the gap is clarified.
Anyway... What are Dr Frost's thoughts on Jewish "mentally ill" brain profile to account for the "Personality Differences"?
Thank you, in advance!
First, a small advantage over a competitor will, over time, produce a much larger advantage. This is called the Matthew effect. For instance:
A slightly better-known researcher gets more citations, leading to more visibility, which leads to even more citations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
A company with a small early lead attracts more customers, capital, and talent, thus widening the gap over time.
Related concepts include cumulative advantage, positive feedback loop, compound growth, and winner-take-all situations.
Of course, this isn’t Kevin’s argument. He has argued that Jewish Americans use ethnic networking to maximize their advantage within various American institutions. But this networking has its down side. Bernie Madoff, for instance, leveraged his ethnic identity to create a Ponzi scheme within the Jewish community, which ultimately suffered a heavy financial loss.
In summary, I would say:
Yes, the cognitive advantage doesn’t fully explain the real-world advantage.
Most of the unaccounted advantage is due to the natural tendency of a small advantage to snowball into a bigger one.
There is also conscious ethnic networking, where appeals to Jewish identity are used to mobilize support for various projects. These projects, however, can turn sour and collapse because they often require more losers than winners even among project supporters. Support for Israel seems to be the one big project that has mobilized the most ethnic support over the longest span of time.
There is a higher incidence of mental disorders among Ashkenazi Jews, but this is a side effect of selection acting on a limited supply of intelligence-boosting alleles. Typically, these disorders are harmful in the homozygous state while being beneficial in the heterozygous state.
"There is a higher incidence of mental disorders among Ashkenazi Jews,"
If Kirkegaard is correct that such "mental disorders" cause Jews to reason "in unusual and novel ways", hence more likely to crack problems no-one else could've... that could, in turn, corroborate Edward Dutton's hypothesis on "clever sillies": ivory-tower academics who, despite high IQ, endorse utterly stupid ideas like Wealth Redistribution and the like...
After all, being able to reason "in unusual and novel ways" is a double-edged sword – that "super-power" has an equal likelihood of inducing one to endorse absolute nonsense, as you're so low in primordial instincts.
(However, unless I'm mistaken, I read that IQ as it goes up correlates with better "mental health"; so I've no idea how all of that could compute without contradiction...)
"Support for Israel seems to be the one big project that has mobilized the most ethnic support over the longest span of time."
Dr Cofnas noted, in one of his papers on the subject, that Neo-Conservatism is "the best-case scenario" where Dr MacDonald's theory *might* work...
I truly hope Dr Cofnas addresses Neo-Conservatism viewed as "a group evolutionary strategy", eventually!
He didn't do so because, originally, "The Culture of Critique" does not deal with it at all: I think Dr MacDonald included a chapter on Neo-Conservatism in some later edition, if I remember correctly...
Great analysis of the Ashkenazi/IQ issue, with copious notes. This topic interests me. Thanks.
"Many such alleles have been identified for IQ, with more remaining to be found, but we know enough of them to estimate the mean IQ of a population."
It is intriguing to surmise the level of intelligence a person could attain if they had all the positive intelligence alleles.
"These polygenic scores are usually based on alleles associated with differences in educational attainment — a reasonable proxy for IQ."
I believe we have discussed this before. I contend that educational attainment is becoming a less reasonable proxy for IQ, thanks to lower standards for higher education admissions and graduation.
"Also, current IQ tests are often biased in favor of verbal intelligence, which contributes disproportionately to Ashkenazi IQ.32"
This fact has confounded me. Why hasn't the bias been neutralized?
"I contend that educational attainment is becoming a less reasonable proxy for IQ"
This will become a problem for future iterations of the EA polygenic score (following EA3 and EA4). For the coding of EA3, Lee et al. (2018) did look at the younger participants and found that their data did not significantly affect the overall results.
"Why hasn't the bias been neutralized?"
We have. There are tests for non-verbal IQ intelligence. It's just that the existing literature includes findings from tests for verbal intelligence.
"This will become a problem for future iterations of the EA polygenic score (following EA3 and EA4)."
I wasn't very clear; I meant for future proxy purposes.
"We have. There are tests for non-verbal IQ intelligence. It's just that the existing literature includes findings from tests for verbal intelligence."
Yes, that would make comparison difficult.
I don't follow your reasoning. EA3 is not based on people who are currently in the educational system (the same goes for EA4). The data had been collected before 2018 from people who had already completed their education. Most, in fact, were middle-aged or even elderly at the time of collection.
I am simply trying to agree with your statement: "This will become a problem for future iterations of the EA polygenic score (following EA3 and EA4)."
Very interesting!