Re: Moorad's comment is sound

Rich Faussette wrote:

"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...."

OK, but you didn't answer my question. Granted, if AJ start out with a genetic advantage, the advantage is likely to continue if they don't breed outside their own group. But aren't you assuming that they didn't start out with the advantage, but that it accrued as a result of self-selection? So the unanswered question is, if they started in the same place as everyone else, how did they make their gains? I don't see how this was possible unless they somehow kept their low-IQ members from breeding. In every society smart people tend to marry smart people; but you don't get a shift in the peak of the IQ distribution, because dumb people keep marrying dumb people.

If IQ were highly heritable, you'd soon get the highs diverging tremendously from the lows. This doesn't seem to happen. Brilliant people regularly emerge from the lowest strata. So maybe the absence of this predicted effect constitutes evidence that IQ is very weakly heritable--and hence not a good target trait for eugenics programs.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: RFaussette@aol.com<mailto:RFaussette@aol.com>
  To: dfwinterstein@msn.com<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 5:29 AM
  Subject: Re: Moorad's comment is sound

  In a message dated 6/30/2005 2:46:07 AM Eastern Standard Time, dfwinterstein@msn.com<mailto: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 Fri Jul 1 01:58:46 2005