Why Jews are smarter (as a group) than most groups.

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It is undeniable that Jews show up in disproportionate numbers in many intellectually based undertakings and professions. Why? I propose that it is NOT so much genetic as cultural. Yes, abstract intelligence is, in part, inheritable. Smart runs in families. For example the Bach Family and the Bernoulli Family.

In Jewish culture both before and after the Enlightenment there was what amounts to a breeding program that tended to mate smart men and women who for genetic reasons produced smart children. In the Jewish Shetels in Europe it was customary to arrange matches between the daughters of the most economically successful families in the village with the brightest young rabbinic scholars. Anyone who has ever attended a Talmud-Torah school or class can testify that grasping the Talmud is a skull busting exercise in non-linear logic. The Talmud contains within it exercises in induction, hypothesis formulation, analogy formation and just plain logic. To become an outstanding Talmudic scholar requires abstract intelligence of the highest degree. To be successful in business particularly in societies that are hostile to Jews requires nimble wits and a sharp eye both literally and socially. Mating prime specimens of both groups. produces smart kids. And this is just what Jewish match making customs did. Since Jews did not know any more about genetics than did Charles Darwin (he was totally unaware of genes) the genetic consequences were totally accidental and fortuitous. But real never the less.

Since the enlightenment Jews have had to compete in fields what depend on demonstrated talent rather than political and family connections. Again this weighted activities of an intellectual nature in the Jewish culture to a greater degree than in the surrounding Gentile culture. So this bias in favor of Smart shows up again and again in Jewish culture and thinking.

And that is why Jews has been Smart in disproportionate numbers.

This is not to say there are no Smart Gentiles. In fact most of the smart people on this planet are Gentiles. But then most of the people on this planet are Gentiles. In the seven billion of the human kind there are at most 25 million Jews, a mere scattering or handful. But in the population of scientists and mathematicians the primary intellectual activities Jews are found in highly disproportionate numbers.

And that is why Jews are smarter (as a group) than most other ethnic groups.

The smartest ethic group in the world are Asians but they are also one of the most numerous groups in the world.

China, for thousands of years was ten light years ahead of the West in just about every undertaking that required intelligence.

ruveyn

You've missed a trick there, ruveyn. About technological inventions - here's a wee list of what Israel has given the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_inventions_and_discoveries

Not bad for some tiny little pinhead of a desert land in the Middle East.

What have oh, I don't know, the Saudis invented since 1948? Answers on a postcard please.

Nice to see the only invention that could be found is a totalitarian surveillance one.

Well, Saudis and Jews are basically cousins.

This is nonsense. Jews are not smarter than most groups. What you're talking about has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. Jews are smarter than Chinese? Jews are smarter than South Asians? Clearly, you have to know that these kinds of statements are absurd.

What you're describing refers to cultural values coupled with a tradition of insular networking. Jews coming to the U.S. traditionally emigrated as urban settlers, with, with strong scholarly traditions, and cultural tradition of involvement in particular professional pursuits... combined with the strong sense of a historically oppressed people of "keeping to their own" and "circling the wagons" as it were. These factors combined to make Jews highly successful and highly represented in particular areas of life in America.

As a contrast, take the huge number of other European immigrants came with an interest of escaping tyranny, owning their own land, not being under anyone's thumb etc., as they had been in their home countries, and they settled westward in specifically agrarian, backwoods and non urban contexts. These people were not "stupid"--but their values and life choices would not lead them to likely become professors, scientists, financial-sector workers, etc.

There are no "smart peoples" vs "stupid peoples". This is a total myth. There are just "people". Everyone has inestimable intrinsic value. These differences you speak of are products of the environment into which the person is born.

This is a good example of why wild income stratification is unethical, and unjustifiable. The kid who is born into a family of lawyers who becomes a lawyer, is no greater intrinsic worth or validity than the kid born into a family of farmers who becomes a farmer. One does not "work harder" than the other. The differences are not qualitative, or matters of personal worth or ranking. Everyone deserves respect, dignity, humane living conditions, and a decent standard of living.

^I think Ruveyn means, 'as measured on the IQ scale.'

ah nothing like a self referential system without any outside correlation.