Re: Moorad's comment is sound

In a message dated 6/30/2005 2:46:07 AM Eastern Standard Time,
dfwinterstein@msn.com writes:
Rich Faussette wrote:

"...The self selection is occurring because that is the nature of Jewish
religion...."

Rich, I haven't been following this thread in detail, but I have a couple of
nagging questions: OK, so Jews have very high regard for scholars; but my
understanding is that's not enough to cause a general rise in IQ unless perhaps
you restrict the breeding of the dumb ones. Did they castrate thick males and
confine thick women to nunneries?

Also, it's well known that children of parents with high IQ tend to have
average IQs, and people with the highest IQs often have average parents; so how
successful is eugenics going to be for raising average IQ? Furthermore,
excellence in scholarship likely has more to do with application and motivation than
native ability. Finally, scholars constitute only a tiny fraction of most
societies. Are Jewish societies that different in this respect?

Don

Don,

If the mean IQ of the population is two standard deviations above that of
surrounding populations, a regression to the mean from generation to generation
would still result in higher IQs relative to outgroups. Since the selection
continues each generation and throughout the community and is not just restricted
to the top 1% as Harpending and Cochran mistakenly suggest, then a
regresssion to the mean is selected against. So, if the mean IQ of the populaton is that
much higher than outgroups, dumbness is relative, isn't it and a dumb
Ashkenazi, more often than not, might still be smarter than an average outgrouper.

I don't know that's well known. What is known and resisted in academia is the
fact that IQ is heritable. It is but they've been fighting that reality for a
century. The reason they give is that they don't want any one group to claim
superiority based on mean IQ, but one group is superior based on mean IQ and
the bible calls them "chosen." What the bible means is "selected."

Jewish socities are very different in that respect. Here is a quote from Lamm
explaining that very fact:

But what if there was no scholar to marry? The rabbis urge coming as
close to it as possible: "If one does not find the daughter of the
learned, he should marry the daughter of a *gadol ha-dor* [a man
great in wisdom and charity and leadership]. If one did not find
such, he should marry the daughter of a communal leader. And if not
her, the daughter of the keeper of the charity fund. And if not her,
then the daughter of the children's teacher. But on no account should
he marry the daughter of an *am-ha-aretz* [one ignorant of the law to
the extent that he is not sufficiently knowledgeable to be
careful with the observance of its details.]
In sum, one should strive to marry as intelligent and intellectual a
person as possible, and to do so, it is proper to spend one's whole
fortune.
 
Note that the entire community is expected top pursue Torah scholarship, not
just professional rabbis as Harpending and Cochran mistakenly suggest.

Also, bear in mind the most important fact; genetic isolation. The orthodox
groups are the ones with the highest mean IQ, not reformed or conservative jews
who are apostates and have moved away from essential Judaism and toward
assimilation since the enlightenment.

The paper True Religion, that I've offered here the past few years finds the
call to eugenics in genesis which has resulted in the high mean IQs of the
orthodox. That's why the Cochran/Harpending paper is important to me. It supports
my interpretation of allegories in genesis.

Here's Paul Johnson in the history of the Jews:
…Jewish society had been designed to produce intellectuals… Jewish society
was geared to support them... rich merchants married sages’ daughters… quite
suddenly, around the year 1800, this ancient and highly efficient social
machine for the production of intellectuals began to shift its output. Instead of
pouring all its products into the closed circuit of rabbinical studies... it
unleashed a significant and ever growing proportion of them into secular life.17

rich faussette
Received on Thu Jun 30 08:32:40 2005