This post is primarily directed to mrfish but anyone is welcome to participate.
<S> mrfish!
I'd like to talk with you about jews in a separate thread that did not start with offences or hot issues. Despite our frequent run-ins I never disrespected you because you always cared to explain how you came to your opinions.
That shows respect for the audience and (usually) willingness to learn. I would like to educate you a little and in return I am willing to give you a try to educate me.
I would still like to persuade you that differences that people somtime/often perceive about jews can be mostly explained by quite ordinary factors that have no moral connotations (i.e. evil-good).
I am sorry to hear that your experience with some particular jews was so discouraging, but you can get similar experience with any other people. Also I am
sure that many people have quite good experiences dealing with jews.
Both questions - of the nature and properties of "intelligence" and of jews' prominence interested people for the last hundred years and were thoroughly researched.
It is a quite recognised knowlege that ashkenasi (european-origin) jews are considerably higher on IQ scale then average white people (~15 points - 1 standard deviation). At the same time asians are slightly higher (~3-5) and some are much lower. Some people would say that ashkenasi jews are much more intelligent, but since the rerm intelligence was not successfully defined (despite many attempts), I would stick to IQ or "cognitive abilities".
The differences are borne by many studies involving well-designed tests that do not have social/cultural loading or often even consious desicions.
That information is not the common knowlege but it is readily available in special publications dedicated to the fields of differential psychology, psychometrics and brain/neural physiology. Also in a few publications that are sold now in the bookstores or through Amazon.
If you disagree with that view I would like to know your sources. If you want to learn about that, I direct you to the "Bell Curve" which in turn lists many other sources.
Let's for the sake of this argument assume that jews really are 1 standard deviation higher on IQ scale - because then a lot can be logically explained. Then we can consider the following issues.
Intellectual advantages (presumed) that jews have would make it natural that jews would be disproportionately represented in areas requiring intelligence - in commerce and in science. And by disproportionately I mean a whole lot.
IQ 115 is a minimum required to enroll into college. IQ 130 is a minimum for serious executive/scientific position. IQ 145 is means that a person has unusual intelligence and 145.6 is more unusual still. How unusual?
Assume US population exepting jews is 280 mil.
CIA data says judaism as 2% of US population (5.6 mil) but it is BS because many if not most of of jews are non-eligious and practically no non-jews
practice Judaism - and we have only about 6 mil jews altogeter. They should really clarify that religion vs. ethnicity stuff. Anyway, let's say we have 4mil ashkenasi jews in US (not to confuse with sephardic jews - those of the non-european origin).
IQ 145.6 would be 3.04 standard deviations from the mean. Using z-table for normal distribution we get value 0.0003.
That means 280mil * 0.0003 = 0.084mil or 84 thousand people have IQ equal or higher then 145.6
For 4 mil ashkenasi jews that would be only 2.04 standard deviations from the mean. z-value is 0.0207.
That means 4mil * 0.0207 = 0.082mil or 82 thousand people.
So if you select 160 thousand smartest (and probably most successfull) people in US, half of them should be jews!
All that is because the difference for z-values of 3.04 and 2.04 is 69 times.
It gets worse the higher you get on the IQ scale at the very edge of teh distribution - the difference for z-values of 3.05 and 2.05 is 101 times!
Out of 50 thousand smartest people most should be jews and out of 100 - 99 should be jews.
There is no surprise that list of names of exceptional individuals in the history of the world has large share of jews. Since jews tend to succeed in whatever they undertake, there is no surprise that many of the world's greatest (most prominent) villains also happened to be jews.
There should be no surprise that 2/3 of the physicists you refer to in your posts are jews too.
Many jews do have a distinct culture - influenced by their intelligence, their historical customs (they engaged in commerce while christians were not allowed to do so but could not engage in agriculture in Russia because they were not allowed to own land), their historical persecution for religious beliefs and for their misinterpreted economical success. Their travels from country to country because of persecution and their spread and familial connections in many countries because of that - having relatives in different countries does wonders for opening your mind.
You also have to remember though that jewish culture is so diverse as to be close to several distinct ones - mostly assimilated/nationalistic, religious/secular, zionist/non-zionist, hasidic/conservative/reformed religious branches.
Great part of younger jews in US do not speak hebrew or yiddish.
Despite common impression, many jews do marry outside their nation. You also have "fundamental" jews who equite such assimilation with dissapearing - as if the blood and DNA do not probabate forever in children, no matter what nation they officially belong to.
Jews do have tradition of education, so a jew was historically more likely to get education then equally intelligent non-jew.
Many jews still perceive world like us-vs-them but it mostly comes from current or recent persecution against jews, not the other way around.
There is no surprise that some less smart/ignorant jews tend to feel superior to the other nation and list the reasons I mentioned before as justification for that.
Most jews being smart and having experienced prosecution/discrimination themselves are very sensitive to the discrimination issues. Jews were major supporters of desegregation. ACLU is probably mostly jewish too.
Name me one country/nation some members of which that do not sometimes vocally express opinions of their supriority? World outside thinks that not jews but americans are the most arrogant nation - this board can present many examples. How about britons, french, japanese, russians?
The Bible (Old Testament) passages you refer to where God proclaims jews selected people and the rest dirt subject to eradication do not reflect the opinions of jews.
First, most jews I know have never read Bible.
Second, christians often used the same passages for their justification of maltreatments of others. Bible being allegorical it is easy to stretch the definition of "chosen people" to christians and at the same time exclude jews from that definition.
Third, many religious books of other faiths proclaim their superiority over other people.
So people maltreating others - is not a jewish problem - they are just more prominent and easier to point to. There is no more tendency in jews to become scoundrels then in any other nation.
Of course big question is do people really differ in intelligence. I am finishing an exellent work "The g Factor" by Arthur Jensen on that subject and I also recomment "The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray.
Many people do not want to believe that differences in intelligence are real and mostly genetic - it makes the world a bleak place. Not much could be done to reduce disparity. Many of the social programs lose their sense.
Still, that is the world we live in. Not designed to be fair. The only reliable way for an individual to make his/her children more intelligent is to marry a more intelligent person and have a balanced diet.
Of course it is possible to breed smarter group of people and many are engaged in eugenic/genetic research but I see no point - it does not benefit anyone currently living.
There is also natural strong eugennic factor working in US well described in "The Bell Curve" which will overshadow the jewish intelligence discrepancy relatively soon.
Curiously, if you do the search of eugenic websites, you can see that some subscribe to the theory that differences in intelligence are real and it's jews who are supressing that knowlege - in hopes to prevent eugenic research in order to stay the smartest nation on Earth. Which is obviously stupid.
Would grand-grandchildren of the current jews be better off being the smartest people on earth in 200 years or would they be better off living among smarter people, even if they are relatively not as much smarter as now? The answer is obvious. You see many jews supporting the "g" theory as well as refuting it. And those that do refure it are just miinformed, not intentional conspirators.
Speaking of conspiracy. Hard to believe that jews would have successfull one going for hundreds of years and achieve so little outside of personal welth and contriburion to science/economy of otehr people. No control of any state, dislike from many other nations, near exterminations by nazis with no influence on any nation to accept refugees (except danes - and I do not think those people were not under jewish influence when they tried to save the few they could).
No coordination whatsoever - a lot of capitalists killed in russia were jews but a lot of revolutionaries were jews too.
It's even harder to believe that someone would keep alive such lousy conspiracy even if it was ever created.
On the closing note, let me repeat my view on Israel. Some jews tried to create state where they will not be in danger of extermination by other people.
Obviously there is much greater chance now for jews in Israel to be exterminated then if they lived in other countries.
There are no reasons outside religious and 3000yr old historical for them to live there. I am sure jews could have aquired/bought some land elsewhere. You could hardly find worse climate then in Israel.
Considering how much talent is concentared in Israel, it is very wastefull for those jews and mankind to have them play farmers and soldiers when they could have been contributing to science, technology and economy of the world.
Most jews in Israel are not religious and most would not care to die or risk their children for the sake of 3000-year old arguments. They would leave if some decent country would let them in. Right now many are waiting for their application to immigrate to Canada to be approved.
The same is true of many palestinians - no countries accept them (including arab countries) and they would gladly leave in peace with Israel if allowed.
Admitting them all to US would solve many of the world problems and benefit US enormously. Countries with larger populations are closing the technology gap.
We could use more brains and more people here if we do want to stay a first-tier country in the future.
Wow, lot of stuff! Excuse me - I did not have time to write briefly...
miko
[ 11-08-2001: Message edited by: miko2d ]
