I think high average Jewish IQ may predate the Sephardi/Ashkenazi split.
Sephardim had Ashkenazi-level achievement in Spain. Italian Jews (who belong to a third group) dominated journalism and were wildly overrepresented in academia, the upper echelons of the military, and other high-status professions. When Sephardim came to Britain in the 18th century they produced figures like David Ricardo and Benjamin Disraeli. Maimonides and Moses de León (author of the Zohar) were Sephardim. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (arguably the most important religious philosopher besides Maimonides) was Italian. Spinoza--the most important pre-20th century secular Jewish philosopher--was Sephardi.
There were historically unique opportunities to manifest genius in early 20th-century America and Western Europe. By that time, the Sephardic population had been decimated through intermarriage (they started mass intermarrying 100 years before Ashkenazim) and the bulk of the population was concentrated in the Ottoman Empire.
Would Einstein have come up with the theory of special relativity if he had been running around Istanbul wearing a fez? Hard to say.
Actually, there were lots of competitors for the special theory of relativity. After all, Maxwell field equations, Michelsen's invariability of speed of light speed, and Lorentzian transformations were all known. The last piece - Lorentzian transformations - were finalized in 1904. So my guess is someone else would have come up with it within 2-3 years. Maybe Minkowski, Albert Einstein's math teacher, who introduced the Minkowski pseudonorm in 1907-1908. General theory though - not. Poincare' and Hilbert are known to have tried...
I would guess that much of what's being measured here is selection effects. E.g. in the US, Sri Lankans outscore South Americans because it's harder to get to the US from Sri Lanka than it is from South America. Even for datasets collected internationally, you have to wonder if they are oversampling from university students and under-sampling from slums, stuff like that.
Why would you assume that people coming from a source country to the US would be a random sample of the source country's population? For example, barriers for an Indian immigrant are high due to the national quotas system. Some countries already speak English; some do not. Family-based migration could allow for an exponentially growing flood of immigrants from a particular country. Some source countries will have positive perceptions of the US; some will have negative perceptions. There are any number of sources of bias.
I'm actually losing a lot of respect for you as a researcher, I feel like this point should be obvious and easy to grasp. Adding more data won't help if the data is biased! A small high-quality random sample is much better than a large sample with major randomization issues.
You yourself acknowledged that African immigrants are highly non-representative. Why is it that you only apply that scrutiny to the data points that counter your hypothesis? This is classic confirmation bias. Data that supports your hypothesis and data that refutes it should ideally receive the same level of scrutiny. Otherwise you are "torturing the data until it confesses".
Legally by matrilineal birth is not the only pathway - the other is giur. Also, it wasn't just average European women. In many cases, the Jewish merchants were recruited by the local chieftains. So they were probably given their daughters to assure loyalty to the chieftain's family. If you were wealthy and intelligent enough, getting orthodox giur would not be a problem. Once that founding family has daughters, there are additional eligible males who can marry them...
There is some mitochondrial DNA evidence. Because in several Jewish populations - like the Ashkenazi or Caucasian Mountain Jewish groups - a lot of mtDNAs goes back to very few ancestral founders - much less than with the male Y chromosomes.
Similarly, we can separate out Episcopals, for instance, from the mainstream white population of the USA and get all sorts of impressive results, but of course no one ever does.
Out of my depth, sadly. I work in the building trades. Nonetheless I will spend some time seeing if I can generate any useful results. If anyone knows where such are summarized, I'd appreciate the tip.
Thanks. Sorry I'm so late returning to this. A couple of observations: one, “High IQ” is defined somewhat arbitrarily. For example if the cutoff were 110 rather than 120, the results would have changed and two: unless I missed it, we again have income by religion but not wealth. It's my proposition that wealth is never parsed via religion because the results would be incendiary.
Thanks. Weird how it contradicts the info supplied by Emil (re Episcopalians) but then I notice that it's only reform jews we're considering here for some reason.
"Nevertheless, perhaps one can posit a special Ashkenazi Jewish culture of learning that the other Jews don’t have, but without this having any underlying genetic causes."
I suggest that most people can learn, albeit some much more than others, but it is what one can do with what they have learned. After all, higher education does not make you smarter — intelligent people live to gain knowledge.
"Polygenic scores: do Jews have higher polygenic scores for intelligence and its proxy, education?"
The term education is rather nebulous, particularly today; a college degree does not mean you are educated. Therefore, I submit that 'education' is a rather poor proxy for intelligence.
The Dunkel study you cite compares 'Jewish' with Christian. Are we not talking about Ashkenazi Jews? A large number of Ashkenazi Jews are atheists. The word Jew can refer to one's religion or ethnicity.
If one considers what Ashkenazi Jews do with their 'education', it is obvious that Ashkenazi intelligence is mostly genetic.
I think high average Jewish IQ may predate the Sephardi/Ashkenazi split.
Sephardim had Ashkenazi-level achievement in Spain. Italian Jews (who belong to a third group) dominated journalism and were wildly overrepresented in academia, the upper echelons of the military, and other high-status professions. When Sephardim came to Britain in the 18th century they produced figures like David Ricardo and Benjamin Disraeli. Maimonides and Moses de León (author of the Zohar) were Sephardim. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (arguably the most important religious philosopher besides Maimonides) was Italian. Spinoza--the most important pre-20th century secular Jewish philosopher--was Sephardi.
There were historically unique opportunities to manifest genius in early 20th-century America and Western Europe. By that time, the Sephardic population had been decimated through intermarriage (they started mass intermarrying 100 years before Ashkenazim) and the bulk of the population was concentrated in the Ottoman Empire.
Would Einstein have come up with the theory of special relativity if he had been running around Istanbul wearing a fez? Hard to say.
Hopefully will be resolved with ancient DNA.
There have been 12 Sephardi Jewish Nobel Prize winners, which makes them the group with the 2nd highest per capita number of prize winners.
Why?
Those cultural traditions are likely connected to genes.
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sephardic_Jews
And like Cofnas said, Sephardic Jews started intermarrying much earlier than Ashkenazis did.
Actually, there were lots of competitors for the special theory of relativity. After all, Maxwell field equations, Michelsen's invariability of speed of light speed, and Lorentzian transformations were all known. The last piece - Lorentzian transformations - were finalized in 1904. So my guess is someone else would have come up with it within 2-3 years. Maybe Minkowski, Albert Einstein's math teacher, who introduced the Minkowski pseudonorm in 1907-1908. General theory though - not. Poincare' and Hilbert are known to have tried...
I would guess that much of what's being measured here is selection effects. E.g. in the US, Sri Lankans outscore South Americans because it's harder to get to the US from Sri Lanka than it is from South America. Even for datasets collected internationally, you have to wonder if they are oversampling from university students and under-sampling from slums, stuff like that.
Not much, just for some small groups.
Why would you assume that people coming from a source country to the US would be a random sample of the source country's population? For example, barriers for an Indian immigrant are high due to the national quotas system. Some countries already speak English; some do not. Family-based migration could allow for an exponentially growing flood of immigrants from a particular country. Some source countries will have positive perceptions of the US; some will have negative perceptions. There are any number of sources of bias.
I'm actually losing a lot of respect for you as a researcher, I feel like this point should be obvious and easy to grasp. Adding more data won't help if the data is biased! A small high-quality random sample is much better than a large sample with major randomization issues.
You yourself acknowledged that African immigrants are highly non-representative. Why is it that you only apply that scrutiny to the data points that counter your hypothesis? This is classic confirmation bias. Data that supports your hypothesis and data that refutes it should ideally receive the same level of scrutiny. Otherwise you are "torturing the data until it confesses".
"Ashkenazis "being overwhelmingly the result of white European women mixing with wealthy and influential jewish men over many generations.
It does if they convert. And we know it was this way because Ashkenazis have Levantine Y DNA.
Legally by matrilineal birth is not the only pathway - the other is giur. Also, it wasn't just average European women. In many cases, the Jewish merchants were recruited by the local chieftains. So they were probably given their daughters to assure loyalty to the chieftain's family. If you were wealthy and intelligent enough, getting orthodox giur would not be a problem. Once that founding family has daughters, there are additional eligible males who can marry them...
There is some mitochondrial DNA evidence. Because in several Jewish populations - like the Ashkenazi or Caucasian Mountain Jewish groups - a lot of mtDNAs goes back to very few ancestral founders - much less than with the male Y chromosomes.
Famous Ashkenazis like Burt Bacharach, Paul Newman and Jeffrey Epstein are basically the same phenotype.
Paul Newman IIRC is mixed, as well as halachically non-Jewish.
So you're saying Reich should apologize to Professor Watson?
Why?
Similarly, we can separate out Episcopals, for instance, from the mainstream white population of the USA and get all sorts of impressive results, but of course no one ever does.
It has been done using the nlsy.
Thanks, I took a look at https://www.nlsinfo.org/investigator/pages/search#
And naturally came up with a lot of results!
Out of my depth, sadly. I work in the building trades. Nonetheless I will spend some time seeing if I can generate any useful results. If anyone knows where such are summarized, I'd appreciate the tip.
https://helmuthnyborg.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Publ_2009_The-Intellligence-Religiosity-Nexus.pdf
Thanks. Sorry I'm so late returning to this. A couple of observations: one, “High IQ” is defined somewhat arbitrarily. For example if the cutoff were 110 rather than 120, the results would have changed and two: unless I missed it, we again have income by religion but not wealth. It's my proposition that wealth is never parsed via religion because the results would be incendiary.
https://i2.wp.com/randomcriticalanalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/iq_by_shared_religion.png?ssl=1
Thanks. Weird how it contradicts the info supplied by Emil (re Episcopalians) but then I notice that it's only reform jews we're considering here for some reason.
"Nevertheless, perhaps one can posit a special Ashkenazi Jewish culture of learning that the other Jews don’t have, but without this having any underlying genetic causes."
I suggest that most people can learn, albeit some much more than others, but it is what one can do with what they have learned. After all, higher education does not make you smarter — intelligent people live to gain knowledge.
"Polygenic scores: do Jews have higher polygenic scores for intelligence and its proxy, education?"
The term education is rather nebulous, particularly today; a college degree does not mean you are educated. Therefore, I submit that 'education' is a rather poor proxy for intelligence.
The Dunkel study you cite compares 'Jewish' with Christian. Are we not talking about Ashkenazi Jews? A large number of Ashkenazi Jews are atheists. The word Jew can refer to one's religion or ethnicity.
If one considers what Ashkenazi Jews do with their 'education', it is obvious that Ashkenazi intelligence is mostly genetic.
The results also seem to show elevated IQs for Finns. To what extent has this phenomenon been examined?
They did about the same as British. But it has been explored since Finns used to score higher in PISA.
Finnish schools seem to have been amongst the best in Europe. So in that case, it would be "nurture".
I knew a lot of Finns growing up in Wisconsin. They also tended to be smart.