Earlier quoted context omitted.
East asians have a higher average IQ,so it is not necessarily a straight iQ thing.
No they don't.
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Jewish Nobel Laureates
61–70 of 82 posts
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#62This might shock the HN community but from my years of mentoring poor performing and under privileged high school students in the Bay Area (i.e. mostly from East Palo Alto), education is not valued by all cultures. I was shocked when I saw this. It was always so obvious to me. That said, it's only a shock because I was raised in a culture (Chinese) that had always valued education. If you never had the security of being sure of your future for more than a few months at a time, education might not seem the best choice. Education is an investment and one that only pays off if you are secure enough in your welfare to reap the benefits. Even for some middle class families, it is becoming a less obvious investment since the price of education has shot up while employment is harder to find.
If the idea of education is not universally valued, is it so hard to believe that groups that do will do better in fields that require years of study?
I read a while back an article on Slate or the Atlantic that sort of explores this very issue. The hypothesis was that Judaism was at one point defined by literacy. Basically, at some point, to be a Jew required you to be read and understand the Torah. It was enormously expensive and over time those who couldn't afford stopped being considered Jews and those who were left were the ones who could afford an education. Thus the culture became one that was placed a strong emphasis on education. Someone who've read the article or know history of the Jews better can correct me on this.
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#63By 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.
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Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#64While 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…
> 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. Consider your magnitudes though. For example, men win 0.961/0.5 = 1.9 times the Nobel Prizes you would expect ba…
Wouldn't percentage of Jews in the Western world be a better stat, given that's more or less the population from which Nobel prize winners are selected?
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Thanks. I had submitted that link to the "Black Nobel Laureates" earlier and let it sit for 30 minutes after no upvotes, then deleted it. Made it appear as if this thread was pride-based upvoting that de-evolved into "Jews have super human intelligence" with no discussion on socioeconomics.
What have you said in this thread about socioeconomics?
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#66Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Funny, I've read the exact opposite.
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I would be very skeptical since the same would apply to Chinese Americans too among others.
Like Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, Samuel Chao Chung Ting, Shing-Tung Yau, Steven Chu, and Daniel Tsui? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_American#Science_and_tech...
Plus the Chinese guy who built China's ICBMs (after the US exiled him, under suspicion that he as sympathetic to his home country ... smart move that was).
Oh, and Terrance Tao.
There's quite a few Chinese-Americans who did pretty well. I'm not sure what generation they are, and I'd have to check if there's a higher proportion than non-western Americans; but the general idea (which could do with some real verification) is that "outsiders" often pursue a lot of the higher risk careers which "insiders" don't tend to flock to.
Just have a look at the students at any hard-core undergraduate course, and count the number of students with black hair.
There's not so many famous Asians in entertainment, probably because of the parts available. A Chinese actor is more likely to be offered the role of "ethnic minor character", while a Jewish actor won't be so constrained.
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#69Jewish have a strong sense of community. Nothing wrong about that.
So if there are lots of jewish who are choosing the laureates, it's "normal" to see a lot of jewish ending up nobel laureates.
Re: Jewish Nobel Laureates
#70By 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?
1. It's not ALL Jews but rather Ashkenazi Jews who are so over-represented
2. Ashkenazi Jews come from Europe (they are basically descendents of Jewish men & Italian women) - this was just was just proven a few days ago [1].
3. Europe in the middle ages heavily discriminated against the Jews (mostly due to the Church). It manifested itself in a number of prohibitions on what Jews could and could not do.
4. These prohibitions put a large premium on intelligence. Then evolution took over - smart Jews were more successful and had more kids [1].
5. Until the late 20 century Jews had a very strong culture of marrying other Jews. So the smart Jews who had kids would only marry other Jews - thus raising intelligence with every generation (since it was not diluted by the larger gene pool of host countries)
6. This process went on for about a thousand years.
As a result, Ashkenazi population has the highest average IQ of any group (about 115 as mentioned in another comment). That in itself would not be a big deal - but that means that they have a DISPROPORTIONATELY large percent of people with really high IQ (2SD above the mean).
What I described is not controversial - it's pretty much current state of scientific thought on the issue.
[0] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008112539.ht...