5 ms·

By 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 ha

by hrasyid 13y ago

By 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?

jprince 13y ago
Yeah, it's based on our tradition of studying Torah translating to studying other fields. The built in cultural requirement to always be a good study has made us wildly successful in academics.
jaryd 13y ago
In traditional Jewish culture there is a large emphasis on education. In the most traditional sense, Rabbis are essentially scholars. They study the Torah. In ancient times they would sit around and do nothing but study the Torah and discuss its various interpretations--this was their primary purpose. You might consider them among the world's first pedants :) In traditional communities Rabbis are among the most respected members. Consequently, there is tremendous value placed on qualities of intelligence and conscientious study. Fast forward to current times and that still exists to a great degree in modern Jewish culture (in my experience).
- azinman2 13y ago
  I'd say the emphasis is more on professionalism. It's been a long time since Jews were primarily agricultural for many reasons (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2003/06/why_jews_dont_farm.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2003/0...). That combined with the fact that Christianity (for a long time) didn't allow loans with interest, so Jews filled in that role (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loans_and_interest_in_Judaism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loans_and_interest_in_Judaism). I don't know why this is on HN at all, however. When I was surprised at the supreme court ruling on gay marriage not well covered on HN (I thought the liberty angle made it appropriate), people seemed to think otherwise (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5949827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5949827).
melling 13y ago
They value education and work very hard to excel in these areas? In America, I think people in general would rather get MBA's and law degrees and simply import engineers and scientists. We've had a dislike of nerds, geeks, and "smart" people for quite some time. It only started becoming somewhat acceptable to people once you could make a lot of money. In software development, you'll frequently find many people simply want to use the job as a stepping stone to middle management.
mynameishere 13y ago
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.
- itchitawa 13y ago
  Sorry, you're not allowed to assign average IQs to racial groups anymore. Not since black Americans were found to be lower than whites. You have to attribute the anomalous test scores to the biases in the tests to be politically correct.
  - fusiongyro 13y ago
    You might find the book Twice as Less interesting, it offers an interesting and researched explanation for the validity of the effect you're mocking.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ekm2 13y ago
  East asians have a higher average IQ,so it is not necessarily a straight iQ thing.
  - clarkm 13y ago
    No they don't.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4hthth4 13y ago
      Way to contribute.
wisty 13y ago
For centuries, Jews in Europe were effectively barred from a great many professions. The big exception tended to be finance (money lending - which Christians were often barred from). So Jewish kids had to learn a lot of math, and some Jewish families had a lot of money. There's actually a big boost second-generation immigrants get. They understand the culture they are in, but they feel they need to work hard to keep up, and they aren't too afraid to break the rules (since it's not really their culture).
- pedalpete 13y ago
  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 coming generations as more of them are raised in English speaking cultures (assuming it will take a generation or two for us to have a large enough sample size).
  - SqMafia 13y ago
    I would be very skeptical since the same would apply to Chinese Americans too among others.
    - wisty 13y ago
      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_technology 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.
tjr 13y ago
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/08/jewish-literacy-as-the-road-to.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/08/jewish-lite...
SqMafia 13y ago
Unless they can control for all other factors or at least most of them, any explanation is going to look pretty silly.
omonra 13y ago
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.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008112539.ht... [1] http://www.economist.com/node/4032638 http://www.economist.com/node/4032638

by hrasyid 13y ago

jprince 13y ago

Yeah, it's based on our tradition of studying Torah translating to studying other fields. The built in cultural requirement to always be a good study has made us wildly successful in academics.

jaryd 13y ago

In traditional Jewish culture there is a large emphasis on education. In the most traditional sense, Rabbis are essentially scholars. They study the Torah. In ancient times they would sit around and do nothing but study the Torah and discuss its various interpretations--this was their primary purpose. You might consider them among the world's first pedants :) In traditional communities Rabbis are among the most respected members. Consequently, there is tremendous value placed on qualities of intelligence and conscientious study. Fast forward to current times and that still exists to a great degree in modern Jewish culture (in my experience).

azinman2 13y ago
I'd say the emphasis is more on professionalism. It's been a long time since Jews were primarily agricultural for many reasons (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2003/06/why_jews_dont_farm.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2003/0...). That combined with the fact that Christianity (for a long time) didn't allow loans with interest, so Jews filled in that role (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loans_and_interest_in_Judaism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loans_and_interest_in_Judaism). I don't know why this is on HN at all, however. When I was surprised at the supreme court ruling on gay marriage not well covered on HN (I thought the liberty angle made it appropriate), people seemed to think otherwise (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5949827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5949827).

melling 13y ago

They value education and work very hard to excel in these areas? In America, I think people in general would rather get MBA's and law degrees and simply import engineers and scientists. We've had a dislike of nerds, geeks, and "smart" people for quite some time. It only started becoming somewhat acceptable to people once you could make a lot of money. In software development, you'll frequently find many people simply want to use the job as a stepping stone to middle management.

mynameishere 13y ago

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.

itchitawa 13y ago
Sorry, you're not allowed to assign average IQs to racial groups anymore. Not since black Americans were found to be lower than whites. You have to attribute the anomalous test scores to the biases in the tests to be politically correct.
- fusiongyro 13y ago
  You might find the book Twice as Less interesting, it offers an interesting and researched explanation for the validity of the effect you're mocking.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ekm2 13y ago
East asians have a higher average IQ,so it is not necessarily a straight iQ thing.
- clarkm 13y ago
  No they don't.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4hthth4 13y ago
    Way to contribute.

wisty 13y ago

For centuries, Jews in Europe were effectively barred from a great many professions. The big exception tended to be finance (money lending - which Christians were often barred from). So Jewish kids had to learn a lot of math, and some Jewish families had a lot of money. There's actually a big boost second-generation immigrants get. They understand the culture they are in, but they feel they need to work hard to keep up, and they aren't too afraid to break the rules (since it's not really their culture).

pedalpete 13y ago
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 coming generations as more of them are raised in English speaking cultures (assuming it will take a generation or two for us to have a large enough sample size).
- SqMafia 13y ago
  I would be very skeptical since the same would apply to Chinese Americans too among others.
  - wisty 13y ago
    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_technology 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.

tjr 13y ago

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/08/jewish-literacy-as-the-road-to.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/08/jewish-lite...

SqMafia 13y ago

Unless they can control for all other factors or at least most of them, any explanation is going to look pretty silly.

omonra 13y ago

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.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008112539.ht... [1] http://www.economist.com/node/4032638 http://www.economist.com/node/4032638