Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jewish Nobel Laureates

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 82 posts

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#41

Post by ekm2 »

mynameishere wrote: post #19
hrasyid wrote: post #9

By the way, has anyone come up with a possible explanation for the seemingly disproportionate number of Jewish laureates and smart people in general? Do Jews have some tradition or belief that's helpful in this?

Average IQ of 115 among the Ashkenazim. That's why. It's not really that interesting, but it enrages almost everyone who hears it. 115 isn't that smart, but it works out that they have a huge disproportion of members in the more important 145+ IQ range. Anyway, you'll find that Jews have similar numbers in such things as Fields medals, Senate seats, the Forbes 400, etc, all at about 15-25 percent of the total.

East asians have a higher average IQ,so it is not necessarily a straight iQ thing.

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#42

Post by downandout »

alphakappa wrote: post #10

While this is an interesting statistic, it can be interpreted in many ways, not all of which are meaningful. Statistically, more men have won Nobel prizes than women (by a large margin). Most Nobel laureates are Caucasian. Most are from the western hemisphere. Other than gender, it may be interpreted to mean that if a group which makes a small fraction of the total world population, they must be better/smarter. It's…

Agreed. I'm not sure why this belongs on HN. It seems very divisive and out of place in the context of the HN community. This list is very short in comparison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Nobel_Laureates . Should we be promoting all of the negative connotations associated with that when compared to the Jewish list?

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#43

Post by cylinder »

ekianjo wrote: post #38
marze wrote: post #29

The Jewish culture has valued certain types of intelligence for centuries, and probably as a result their average IQ is measurably higher due to selection effects. If you assume it is outliers on the IQ spectrum that will win the prize, this isn't surprising at all. I'd guess that a big reason why people of the Jewish faith have been persecuted over the centuries is that because of their IQ advantage they gain more w…

am i reading this on hn? what are your sources? and what does jewish culture mean anyway when jewish people live in all continents in very different environments and of various descents? the reason why jewish people have accumulated more wealth may as well have nothing to do with their intelligence but merely because they support each other when they are in position of power and therefore raise the status of their co…

"Support each other" is the defining characteristic of the Jewish community. I am part of a different highly-educated minority, but its people seem to always be envious/jealous of each other and highly competitive, and so usually refuse to work with one another.

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#45

Post by pedalpete »

wisty wrote: post #20
hrasyid wrote: post #9

By the way, has anyone come up with a possible explanation for the seemingly disproportionate number of Jewish laureates and smart people in general? Do Jews have some tradition or belief that's helpful in this?

For centuries, Jews in Europe were effectively barred from a great many professions. The big exception tended to be finance (money lending - which Christians were often barred from). So Jewish kids had to learn a lot of math, and some Jewish families had a lot of money. There's actually a big boost second-generation immigrants get. They understand the culture they are in, but they feel they need to work hard to keep…

I've read that because they often learn both Hebrew and English as young children, and therefore learn to read and write both left-to-right and right-to-left, this has an effect on the number of neural connections across both sides of the brain which results in an increase in creativity. Unfortunately, I can't find a link which even references this.

If this is the case, we may see a similar increase in Muslims in the coming generations as more of them are raised in English speaking cultures (assuming it will take a generation or two for us to have a large enough sample size).

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#46

Post by ekianjo »

cylinder wrote: post #43
ekianjo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

am i reading this on hn? what are your sources? and what does jewish culture mean anyway when jewish people live in all continents in very different environments and of various descents? the reason why jewish people have accumulated more wealth may as well have nothing to do with their intelligence but merely because they support each other when they are in position of power and therefore raise the status of their co…

"Support each other" is the defining characteristic of the Jewish community. I am part of a different highly-educated minority, but its people seem to always be envious/jealous of each other and highly competitive, and so usually refuse to work with one another.

there are oter communities supporting each other. Hungarians are well knwn in that regard too. But again I would be very careful not to attribute this to higher intelligence or something.

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#47

Post by marze »

ekianjo wrote: post #38
marze wrote: post #29

The Jewish culture has valued certain types of intelligence for centuries, and probably as a result their average IQ is measurably higher due to selection effects. If you assume it is outliers on the IQ spectrum that will win the prize, this isn't surprising at all. I'd guess that a big reason why people of the Jewish faith have been persecuted over the centuries is that because of their IQ advantage they gain more w…

am i reading this on hn? what are your sources? and what does jewish culture mean anyway when jewish people live in all continents in very different environments and of various descents? the reason why jewish people have accumulated more wealth may as well have nothing to do with their intelligence but merely because they support each other when they are in position of power and therefore raise the status of their co…

It is simply speculation and was stated as such. However, the IQ question has been studied and you can find discussion of it elsewhere in this thread.

The relatively hard data says that Jewish people are about 100 times more likely to win a Nobel prize than an average person. 100x is a big factor. Obviously, there must be some fairly powerful factor or factors involved, and it is interesting to speculate.

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#48

Post by gcb0 »

alphakappa wrote: post #10

While this is an interesting statistic, it can be interpreted in many ways, not all of which are meaningful. Statistically, more men have won Nobel prizes than women (by a large margin). Most Nobel laureates are Caucasian. Most are from the western hemisphere. Other than gender, it may be interpreted to mean that if a group which makes a small fraction of the total world population, they must be better/smarter. It's…

The only take away from this is that Obama is secretly a jew.

Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates

#49

Post by ekianjo »

mynameishere wrote: post #19
hrasyid wrote: post #9

By the way, has anyone come up with a possible explanation for the seemingly disproportionate number of Jewish laureates and smart people in general? Do Jews have some tradition or belief that's helpful in this?

Average IQ of 115 among the Ashkenazim. That's why. It's not really that interesting, but it enrages almost everyone who hears it. 115 isn't that smart, but it works out that they have a huge disproportion of members in the more important 145+ IQ range. Anyway, you'll find that Jews have similar numbers in such things as Fields medals, Senate seats, the Forbes 400, etc, all at about 15-25 percent of the total.

Iq relates very poorly to success in life. There are several publications on this subject so before saying /thats why/ you should look for other reasons that may explain their successes.
Post reply on HN