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What about Jewish intermarriage rates? You say "the rate of Jewish "outbreeding"—procreating with non-Jews—is half a percent. That's the lowest rate of any population in the world today." Not sure how that squares with the over 50% intermarriage rate.... seems that Jews must be outbreeding at a higher rate than you say.

2

More importantly, if we take a biological or biosocial view of variation in human capabilities it may be the case that in sociologically Jewish communities some traits have been favored, and others kicked out or discouraged from breeding within the community... but what of it? That only matters if you take a perspective that values "intelligence" over other traits.

If you have children you quickly learn that you love them regardless of their IQ. You love them for who they are. Perhaps love... and access to resources and the right to be part of a Jewish community... have been differentially distributed to higher IQ individuals by Jewish communities across the centuries. Is that anything to be proud of? Actually, it would mean that any finding of Jewish intelligence should be a mark of shame for all of us Jews.

I guess that's where this Jew parts with traditional Jewish culture (and so should you William Saletan). That's nothing to be proud of. Weep for the "not good enough" Jewish children we lost, and make sure you don't repeat that Jewish mistake with your own children, or imagine that the socio-genetic engine of past centuries (if it worked this way... and it may have) is anything to be proud of.

I own a "mutt" dog... I chose it for its hybrid vigor. Come to think of it, I'm a mutt myself, one Jewish parent, one WASP parent... although my religion is more Jewish than anything else.

Intellectuals, Jewish and not, tend to think that intelligence is something to be proud of. I suppose there is a nasty competitive world out there where that is true, but don't be blind to just how nasty and competitive that perspective is, or the generations of sadness and rejection that this theory suggests any differential Jewish intelligence scores might be built on. Think of those generations of rejected Jewish children.

3

Finally, a related issue to be considered in the Jewish gene pool is the extent to which previous generations of Jewish women may have been, as dispersed and vulnerable minority group members, (and perhaps married to visiospatially compromised Jewish men who were not known to be warriors!), been subject to rape. Since the children of Jewish women are considered Jewish, regardless of father, the genes of those rapists are included in the Jewish gene pool. How were raping Cossaks different from non-raping Cossacks? Were they more vigorous? More "fit" in some way? Even more intelligent? Is part of any differential Jewish genetic factors a function of rape and "foreign" genes? Interesting to meditate on. I don't know the answer. However, here too, we would find that the Jewish difference is not built simply on some cultural love of books and words... but is an inheritance of pain and weakness.

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The bottom line is that genetic differences do exist, but they are neither something to be proud of or ashamed of. But we should recognize that the biosocial explanations we can think of for these differences are not particularly ennobling. We should all work to avoid repeating the painful cultural patterns of the past. Being Jewish is not (or should not be) thought of as some kind of breeding program for intelligence. That would be absurd and obscene. If it ever was that, accidentally or intentionally, it's time to move beyond it.

Bad form to reply to my own message, but this is important.

If the finding of a slightly higher Ashkenazi Jewish IQ score is accurage (if!), the proposed mechanism of centuries of rejecting Jewish children should make this finding a mark of shame.

It means we Jews are inheritors of a culture that regularly rejected our own children, regularly ranked them, regularly preferred our most intelligent children over our other children.

Even if we no longer do this in our families, if we continue that attitude of favoring intelligence over other attributes (and it's hard to deny that we do that... it's a cultural stereotype that still seems to be true today), we are continuing a very unfortunate intellectual/religious/social habit and projecting that value on to our society at large.

It is a fine line between valuing intellectual achievement and excessively valuing intellectual achievement. Whether we are rewarding intellectual ability with the resources needed to make more babies and ensure a genetic future for oneself...or whether we are rewarding it with higher salaries and social position, if we are rewarding people for an innate genetic characteristic (and not simply effort and hard work), then we are on very problematic ethical ground.

We Jews, if we have victimized our own children by excluding them from our community for centuries when they failed to live up to our intellectual standards, should be on the forefront of opposing the victimization of people on the basis of failing to posses some intellectual or other capacity, and obviously we shouldn't do this to our own children. This whole theory points to our own Jewish need for some tikun olam... some world repairing... and some repentance (if it is true that we have done this.)

The socio-genetic model of IQ selection (at least one model of it) suggests also that "our children" are out there in the non-Jewish community and this also connects us as family to the larger non-Jewish world.

It also suggests that we have some heavy karma to consider regarding what our culture and ancestors have done to cast out our own children.

And on the contrary a culture/group with a more average IQ score can in effect say to us "we have all of our children... do you?"

Of course that is just a metaphor. It doesn't really matter what happened in the past. What matters is that we recognize that we (all of human society) need to accept "all of our children", regardless of intelligence or other genetically influenced traits, as our own, and ensure a personal future for them and a genetic future for them if they want it. That means taking pride in the full range of human capabilities, and helping people reach those capabilities.

I'm not advocating "anti-intellectualism"... but "pro-intellectualism" is a problem, and perhaps the echo of a big Jewish problem. Being smart is nothing to be proud of if this is the story of why you are smart. This socio-genetic theory of intelligence is a particular problem for the Jewish culture of which I am a part. It raises for me dark questions about our past.