Some of the evidence for Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence/IQ advantage=~100 % heritable in origin & the major cause of their extravagant overrepresentation in intellectual achievements.

#intelligenceresearch #psychology #populationgenetics #groupdifferences

1) polygenic scores

2) No comparable success for non-Ashkenazi Jews:

E.g. among Nobel laureates, Orthodox or Sephardic Jewish Nobel laureates, such as R. Aumann who tackled the Talmud in yeshiva studies in his youth, are the exceptions. Non-Ashkenazi Jews do not show high average IQ scores.

3) Evidence for environenmental factors producing an outcome as distinct as e.g. Ashkenazi Jewish % of all Nobel laureates in natural & economic sciences is very weak. Even the very best home environments add at most only a few IQ points.

4) On the extremes of exceptional intelligence, from which e.g. Nobel laureates & chess champions emerge, Ashkenazi Jewish representation is much higher while Ashkenazi Jews are also present in ever-greater disproportion the further one looks in the rarified IQs above 145.

5) Serious systemic discrimination not thwarting success:

During 1900-1950, despite pervasive & continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, & despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 % of Nobel Prizes in sciences.

6) The vast majority of Jewish households, both in the United States & in Israel, are secular & not particularly different from those of their gentile neighbors in similar socio-economic conditions.

7) Distinct IQ composition:

IQ composition & average IQ that can be explained only by evolutionary selection pressure: in average, high verbal & mediocre visuospatial IQ with a uniquely low correlation between verbal and visuospatial IQ among individuals (<0.35)

8) Genius level IQ results from rare polygenic variants, environmental factors well known for not being able to cause it.

In 1954, IQ tests in NY City’s public schools discovered 28 students in the school system with IQs over 170. Twenty-four of these students were Jews.

9) SYSTEMATIC environmental factors outside of serious insults (led poisoning, malnutrition) are known to have a very weak effect on intelligence . Furthermore, genius level IQ is never a result of environmental push: genes set upper limit on IQ.

To continue on SYSTEMATIC environmental factors, siblings reared together are no more correlated in IQ than siblings separated at birth & adopted siblings are not correlated at all.

Furthermore, Ashkenazi Jews have actually been deprived of the many conditions considered by nurture-only proponents to be potentially IQ and achievement enhancing during some of their decades of success both in IQ tests & intellectual domains.

10) Issue of cultural appropriation:

Human groups have been known to be efficient copiers of cultural aspects that have been observed to be advantageous. Gentile societies have been around & aware of "Jewish culture", prone to be influenced by it as the benefits would be huge.

11) Yet Ashkenazi Jews have held a considerable advantage not only at a level of educational aptitude & professions but also in every major intellectual domain that reward high verbal , deductive, & inductive reasoning & where competition is fierce notwithstanding discrimination.

12) In a nutshell, the level of disproportionate success of Ashkenazi Jews can be predicted from, is mainly explained by, and is well in line with the known causality between IQ and positive outcomes within and between groups.

@a_centrism: partially influenced by your IQ threads

P.S. Something for #bretstephens and #NYTimes #NewYorkTimes to consider...

Thank you for reading. One would think that only a borderline insane ignoramus of an ideologue could remain in denial of heritability & cognitive group advantage after reading this thread...