Jordan Peterson: IQ, Race & The “Jewish Question”


January 13, 2019 | 46 Comments »

Leave a Reply

46 Comments / 46 Comments

  1. @ yamit82: There is no question that some nations have achieved more in terms of industrial production, medical breakthroughs, and improvements in the standard of living and quality of life for their peoples, than have others. But I think that cultural differences, and even to a limited extent the different natural environments of diiferent countries, is the major cause of these different performances, not genetics.

  2. Are Jews Smarter?

    From top, Dr. Henry Harpending and Dr. Gregory Cochran.
    (Photo: From top, courtesy of Henry Harpending; courtesy of Gregory Cochran)

    Ascribing an ethnic or racial explanation to any trait more ambiguous than skin color is by definition a dangerous idea, the kind of notion that can seep into the political arena with disastrous consequences. Institutionalized racism has always found sanction in the scientific community, from eminent biologist Louis Agassiz’s racial typologies justifying slavery in the 1850s, to the Nazi scientists’ depraved use of calipers to establish Jewish inferiority, to psychologist Arthur Jensen’s call in the sixties to stop funding Head Start because most of its poor, black recipients were intrinsically uncoachable.

    We may consider ourselves the products of a new, more enlightened age, and scientists may carry on with more sensitivity than they did in the past. Yet to invoke the genome as an explanation for anything more complicated than illness or the most superficial traits (like skin color) is still considered taboo, as Harvard president Larry Summers discovered when he suggested the reason for so few female math and science professors might lurk in scribbles of feminine DNA (rather than, say, the hostile climes of the classroom, the diminished expectations of women’s parents, or a curious cultural receptivity to Pamela Anderson’s charms).

    For this reason, and the fact that it did not meet the standards of traditional scientific scholarship, Harpending and Cochran’s paper attracted a barrage of criticism from mainstream geneticists, historians, and social scientists.

    “It’s bad science—not because it’s provocative, but because it’s bad genetics and bad epidemiology,” says Harry Ostrer, head of NYU’s human-genetics program.

    “I see no positive impact from this,” says Neil Risch, one of the few geneticists who’s dipped his oar into the treacherous waters of race and genetics. “When the guys at the University of Utah said they’d discovered cold fusion, did that have a positive impact?”

    “I’d actually call the study bullshit,” says Sander Gilman, a historian at Emory University, “if I didn’t feel its idea were so insulting.”

    Cochran mirthfully bats their complaints away. “I don’t see what the big deal is here,” he says when I reach him at his New Mexico home. “I haven’t actually told people how to make a hydrogen bomb out of baking soda in their garages.”

    But there’s no question that Cochran and Harpending knew what they were doing. They were advancing a theory with a patina of sexiness and political incorrectness, one that would generate a good deal of discussion. And that it did. Some of that discussion was positive, and some was not, as one might expect. That’s always the problem with theories that exploit stereotypes—they’re titillating, sure, but also handy refuges for the intellectually lazy. The trick is not to harden and grow cold as we turn backward, as sure as Lot’s wife.

    “Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that ‘Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler,’ ” reads the first sentence of Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence. “The same principle must be invoked in explaining Einstein himself.” The authors, clearly, have no fear of getting personal. Einstein, they seem to be saying. Need we say more? The man whose very name is a shorthand for genius was an Ashkenazi Jew.

    The world’s proliferation of Einsteins—well, maybe not Einsteins exactly, but distinguished Jewish thinkers, particularly in math and the sciences—form the stark, quantifiable basis for Cochran and Harpending’s hypothesis. Though Jews make up a mere 0.25 percent of the world’s population and a mere 3 percent of the United States’, they account, according to their paper, for 27 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners, 25 percent of all ACM Turing Award winners for computer science, and 50 percent of the globe’s chess champions. (What the paper doesn’t say is that these numbers seem to be tallied for optimum Jewishness, counting as Jews those who have as few as one Jewish grandparent to claim; it also wrongly assumes these winners are all Ashkenazim. But still.) Cochran and Harpending also cite studies claiming that Ashkenazim have the highest IQ of any ethnic group for which there’s reliable data, perhaps as much as a full standard deviation above the general European average, which means, at the far end of the spectrum, that 23 per thousand Ashkenazim have an IQ over 140, as opposed to 4 per thousand Northern Europeans.

    Reading these numbers, I was reminded of a story a friend once told me about a peer of his at Cambridge who wearily dismissed the intellect of another student with a five-word declaration: “Just your average Jewish genius.”

    Most social scientists—and biological scientists, for that matter—would argue that a complex combination of culture, history, and religious tradition has been responsible for the steady, metronomic production of average Jewish geniuses. Cochran and Harpending make a different case.

    Continue article at http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/1478/index1.html

  3. What Makes Jews So Smart?

    Why did Jews become a people of merchants, bankers, scholars and doctors? A new book offers a bold, original answer to this great historical question.

    “The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492,” by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University Press, 344 pages, $34.95

    The intellectual success of the Jews in the modern era and their prominence in occupations in the realms of commerce, medicine and finance since the Middle Ages are among the most challenging mysteries in the long history of the Jewish people.

    For the latest news from Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish World, subscribe to Haaretz.com

    Zvi Eckstein and Maristella Botticini present in their book “The Chosen Few,” recently translated into Hebrew by Inga Michaeli ?(Tel Aviv University Press?), a revolutionary thesis about the development of the Jews’ relative advantage in occupations that necessitated literacy and education: After the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the survival of the Jewish religion demanded that every Jew learn to read and write, and acquire knowledge-acquisition skills; whoever was unable to do so ? became assimilated. Thus, out of necessity, the Jews found themselves possessed with skills that proved critical for their economic development.

    From the time of the Babylonian exile, in the sixth century B.C.E. until the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism rested on two main pillars: the rituals carried out at the Temple and the reading of the written Torah. A small elite of priests headed the Temple, and Torah study was also the province of a very few. The Roman conquest of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple at once switched Judaism’s “center of gravity” from the priesthood in Jerusalem to a growing community of rabbis and scholars ? that is, from beit hamikdash to beit hamidrash ?(from the Temple to the religious study hall?).

    In the absence of an actual tangible center of ritual, Judaism’s survival then became contingent upon its ability to create an alternative that could adapt to the tough new conditions. The reading and studying of the Torah by every Jewish man ? this constituted the foundation of the Jewish people’s existence from that point on. To ensure continuity, every man was tasked with the duty of imbuing his sons from a young age with the ability to read and write. That was indeed a revolutionary development in a world in which a majority of whose inhabitants were illiterate.

    All this is well known, but what is less clear relates to the unforeseen consequences of this dramatic development, both for Judaism and for the mutual relations between its adherents and their surroundings. Instilling literacy and teaching Torah entailed high expenditure ?(the book contains relevant and interesting data and estimates of such?), but at the same time, in the first centuries after the Second Temple’s destruction, most Jews were still engaged in farming, and thus lived in poverty and hardship. How could a simple Jewish farmer in some Galilee village in 200 C.E. bear the cost of educating his sons? And what did he get out of it?

    This was a central existential dilemma that burdened Jews in that period: to bear the financial burden of education and thereby cleave to Judaism, or to benefit from the immediate saving of such expenditures, and thereby forgo Judaism. Simple economic logic predicts that such a fateful decision would be made according to each person’s relative advantage and preferences. Obviously, Jews whose affinity for their religion was weak to begin with, or those who had difficulty learning, would be tempted to choose less difficult alternatives.

    https://www.haaretz.com/what-makes-jews-so-smart-1.5316148

  4. YAMIT– I have both “A Treasury of Jewish Folklore” and “A Treasury of Jewish Humour” by Nathan Ausubel, and in the first especially, there are many stories about Torah scholars being sought after for sons-in-law. How their “living” would be apportioned out amongst the whole village, one here giving breakfast, another giving dinner, another giving a place to sleep (often just a plank of wood), another to mend his coat another his shoes, pants, etc. and the whole village would rotate in turn. And I have other sources that are similar…. so I DO know…

    By the way those books above are wonderful to read. Really “Treasuries”….

  5. @ yamit82:

    Yes Yamit, I know about the first part, in fact my maternal grandparents were first cousins..from Akmene, Lithuania. We “Irished” it into “Ack-me-anne” (my dear late father’s family was from across the River in Latvia, a town (3/4 Yidden) called in Yiddish, “Nyrea or Nyra” also called “Friedrichstadt” and today, Jaunjelgava.
    (Maybe that’s how I got my brilliant mind …???!!)

    Perhaps you are also right about the mind dissipation of the past 100 years. Very much like the theory that since Jews brought social conscience into the world, and caused preservation of lives which otherwise would have “gone under”, and aided by medical discoveries, saving those who otherwise would have been “weeded out” allowing them to breed, and bear sub intelligent beings, who themselves were allowed to breed…. et cetera..et cetera etc.

    Another theory is that since man began to live in settlements, and later, to read, his long distance sight which had always warned him against danger in the open field looming, gradually became lost, and the weaker humans who were not “out and about” anyway, survived.. That they bred fewer and fewer normals but more and more sub-normals… Just a theory as is the other, but there’s SOME sense in each.

    Eugenics a la carte….

  6. Edgar G. Said:

    That last part of your highlight excerpt from one of your specialty “links”….surely that was “Muhammed Ibn McCoy..(maybe McCarthy.).al Chazerim”

    LOL

  7. Edgar G. Said:

    Got to be genetics first…. environment, somewhere after that. Having the environment and not the genetics doesn’t seem to work en masse. I’m referring to the fact that there are exceptions everywhere….but who knows how far back in their family history they may have had a Jewish “lodger”……

    Genetics… Jews were for most of their history small populations self-exiled or ghettoized in their host countries so a lot of inbreeding first and 2nd cousins, Marriages were arranged were most sought after spouse for women were rabbinic scholars. Usually, daughters of learned scholars have arranged marriages with young rabbinic scholars. One can see where the highly developed IQ’s of some Jews came from. Lack of intermarriage insured this trend among Jews until about 100 years ago where Western Jews freed from their ghettos and massive assimilation will shortly reverse the high degree of Jewish IQ developed over nearly 2 millennia.

    Jewish DNA – Genetic Research and The Origins of the Jewish People

  8. @ yamit82:

    That last part of your highlight excerpt from one of your specialty “links”….surely that was “Muhammed Ibn McCoy..(maybe McCarthy.).al Chazerim”

  10. @ adamdalgliesh:

    Adam you’re dragging “red herrings” all across the “scent”….. There s NO denying that the Jews…..0.2% of the world’s population, have won 23% of all Nobel Prizes in the sciences, philosophy, literature etc. regimens that the World consider as pre-eminent for human advancement.

    { And, as I remarked to you regarding another of your posts, perhaps the higher intelligence of the Jews in Israel (and elsewhere) which you specifically chose as the area, leans towards making them good lawyers, and not good leaders…

    Got to be genetics first…. environment, somewhere after that. Having the environment and not the genetics doesn’t seem to work en masse. I’m referring to the fact that there are exceptions everywhere….but who knows how far back in their family history they may have had a Jewish “lodger”……

    You keep trying HARD to be as Politically Correct as it’s inventor. (maybe also a Jew)
    You lean over backwards to dredge out those studies that show Jews are not any more intellgent than blacks.

  11. @ yamit82:

    When the Greeks discovered the Yahud, they described them as “a nation of philosophers”…Also from around the late 1st Cent. BCE onward, Goyim became very interested in the ethical content of Torah Judaism, and crowded into the synagogues everywhere. They were Torah believers…. There were numerous discourses by the Sages and later rabbinic discussions about them, and it was decided that they were NOT Jews but because the observed the Noachide Laws, they also were not Goyim. The called them “G-d Fearers/G-D Lovers”.. So Jews DID contribute Social morality to the ancient world, (which stopped leaving unwanted babies on hillsides to be eaten by wolves etc) and much more that there is no point in going into now. I’m not about to be dragged into an argument with anybody who has discovered a “favourable link” on Wikipaedia.

    By the way the Arabs DID invent something…..Airliner hi-jacking”……..!!

    Also they invented “Muhammed’….according to the archaeologists who worked kn the Mecca area for years, and who denied that there was ever any historical time when Mecca existed as described in Arab “traditional” accounts nor in the Koran.

  17. @ adamdalgliesh:

    Scientific Proof of God

    Genesis & The Big Bang Theory

    “This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth… [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

    – Robert Jastrow
    (God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)

  18. @ adamdalgliesh:

    adamdalgliesh Said:

    Oh my gosh! To th extent that this is true, it makes “science” a joke.

    You recognize hypothesis, assumptions, and theory ….Until about 50 years ago science ( over 90% of all scientists and philosophers) assumed since Aristotle the universe was eternal with no beginning. We have since the echo of the Big bang proving the universe had a beginning. Darwin has been mostly debunked. Almost daily some accepted scientific fact assumptions have been proven fallacious.

    Curious that no 2 philosophers ever agree with another. Proving the human mind cannot be depended upon.

    The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians] who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algorithmic fashion. The Babylonians developed formulas to calculate solutions for problems typically solved today by using linear equations, quadratic equations, and indeterminate linear equations. By contrast, most Egyptians of this era, as well as Greek and Chinese mathematics in the 1st millennium BC, usually solved such equations by geometric methods, such as those described in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Euclid’s Elements, and The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. The geometric work of the Greeks, typified in the Elements, provided the framework for generalizing formulae beyond the solution of particular problems into more general systems of stating and solving equations, although this would not be realized until mathematics developed in medieval Islam.

    By the time of Plato, Greek mathematics had undergone a drastic change. The Greeks created a geometric algebra where terms were represented by sides of geometric objects, usually lines, that had letters associated with them. Diophantus (3rd century AD) was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician and the author of a series of books called Arithmetica. These texts deal with solving algebraic equations and have led, in number theory to the modern notion of Diophantine equation.

    Earlier traditions discussed above had a direct influence on the Persian mathematician Mu?ammad ibn M?s? al-Khw?rizm? (c. 780–850).

  19. @ yamit82: It is an important point that the contributions of various peoples to “civilization” and progress in science and technology varies widely in different times periods, depending on that countries political and miitary situation, economy, cultural values, and even climate. Thus the Greek contribution to civilization largely ended with the conquest of the Greek city states, first by Macedon, then Rome, then Byzantium, then by the Crusaders ,and finally be the Turks. The Greeks needed military, political and economic power before thay could contribute much to the growth of civilization. The same was true of the Dutch, the English, the Germans, the Russians, and yes, the Swedes in later times. And let’s not forget that “civilized” values can be abandoned at the drop of a pin by supposedly “advanced,” sophistoicated nations, such as Germany 1933-45, when the country reverted completely to the vallues of its pre-Christian, barbarian past, and did so proudly and openly.

  20. @ yamit82:

    Generalization and arguing from absence of evidence are accepted scientific methods.

    Oh my gosh! To th extent that this is true, it makes “science” a joke. Most genuine scientists, at least in the natural sciences do not not accept generalizations based on lack of evidence as valid. Only generalizations based on a great deal of accumulated evidence are accepted as facts-such as experiments that are replicated over and over again with the same results. Other proposed generalizations are regarded only as “hypotheses,” or “conjectures.”

    It is not strictly true that the Arabs invented nothing of value, because they developed Algebra (derived from an Arabic word) and Arabic numbers, and made discoveries in astronomy. In the early Arab period, there were also sophisticated philosophers, such as Ibn Rushd (Averoes in Latin) who made towards the development of a rational method for acquiring knowledge. Ibn Rushd influenced both Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas, who was the first Christian rationalist philosopher.

    It is interesting, however, that IBn Rushd’s writings were preserved only in Hebrew and Latin translations, while all copies of his original Arabic work were burned on orders from fundamentalist Arab rulers who regarded them as heresy. It was only when rationalist works of philosophy were banned throughout the Arab world and the mystical philosophy of al_Gazali, who maintained that everrything that happened in the world was the Will of God, and that humans could do nothing to change His Will, that the decline of Arab civilization began in earnest (approximately 13th century). It has been declining ever since then. This is all documented in a book called “The closing of the Arab mind.” I can’t remember the author’s name. It demonstrates that it is the values and ideology that prevails in a certain culture, not genetics, that determines if a people make contributions to civilization or not.

  21. The Steve King saga reveals how political damaging and self-isolating it is to show any sympathy with “white supremacy” or “white nationalism.” It alienates aven the main stream Right in the U>S. What possible purpose could be served by Israpundit publishing aerticles that appear to support this idea? This from Fox News two days ago:

    Rep. Steve King removed from committee assignments amid ‘white supremacist’ controversy
    Matt Richardson18 hours ago
    Rep. Steve King faces bipartisan backlash as Republicans and Democrats condemn his comments on white supremacy

    Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was stripped of his committee assignments by his fellow House Republicans Monday evening following bipartisan condemnation of King’s recent remarks on white supremacy and white nationalism.

    “We will not tolerate this type of language in the Republican Party … or in the Democratic Party as well,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters. “I watched what Steve King said and we took action.”

    JASON CHAFFETZ: STEVE KING MUST FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR RACIST REMARKS

    In a formal statement, McCarthy said King’s comments were “beneath the dignity of the Party of Lincoln and the United States of America. His comments call into question whether he will treat all Americans equally, without regard for race and ethnicity. House Republicans are clear: We are all in this together, as fellow citizens equal before God and the law. As Congressman King’s fellow citizens, let us hope and pray earnestly that this action will lead to greater reflection and ultimately change on his part.”

    In a statement of his own, King insisted that his comments had been “completely mischaracterized” and blasted McCarthy for what King called “a political decision that ignores the truth.” According to his website, King was previously a member of House committees on the judiciary, agriculture and small business.

    King, 69, was already under fire from both parties over a series of racially charged remarks when he made the head-turning comments in a New York Times interview published last week.

    FLASHBACK: AUTHOR STEPHEN KING ASKS IOWANS TO VOTE AGAINST ‘RACIST DUMBBELL’ STEVE KING

    “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King asked the paper. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

    In his statement Monday, King insisted his use of “that language” was referring “ONLY to Western Civilization and NOT to any previously stated evil ideology ALL of which I have denounced.

    “My record as a vocal advocate for Western Civilization is nearly as full as my record in defense of Freedom of Speech,” King concluded. ” … I will continue to point out the truth and work with all the vigor that I have to represent 4th District Iowans for at least the next two years.”

    The loss of King’s committee assignments may not be the end of his trouble. Earlier Monday, Reps. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, introduced separate censure resolutions against the Republican. Censure is one of three formal modes of punishment in the House. It is more severe than a reprimand, but not as severe as expulsion. The House has only censured 23 members in history, most recently, former Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., in December 2010.

    “Anything less [than censure] would be a slap on the wrist,” Rush told reporters. “Steve King’s continual, serial, expression of hard, rabid racism must come to a screeching halt. This Congress must rise up and express its sentiment.”

    Senate Republicans also expressed their disgust with King, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying that if King “doesn’t understand why ‘white supremacy’ is offensive, he should find another line of work.”

    “There is no place in the Republican Party, the Congress or the country for an ideology of racial supremacy of any kind,” McConnell said. “I have no tolerance for such positions and those who espouse these views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. Rep. King’s statements are unwelcome and unworthy of his elected position.”

    Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said King’s remarks “are his own and his exclusively and what he said was reprehensible and ought to lead to his resignation from Congress.”

    “I think it’s very clear that the party leadership is unified that Steve King is out of bounds and that he should no longer be serving in Congress,” Romney said.

    GOP CAMPAIGN BOSS CONDEMNS REP. STEVE KING: ‘MUST STAND UP AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY’

    Last year, King tweeted “culture and demographics are our destiny” and said we “can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

    In 2013, he commented that while he has some sympathy for some illegal immigrants, “they aren’t all valedictorians, they weren’t all brought in by their parents — for everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    Shortly before the 2018 midterm elections, in which King was running, Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, then the head of the GOP campaign committee, issued an extraordinary public denunciation of him.

    King has already drawn a primary challenger for the 2020 election: Randy Feenstra, a GOP state senator.

    Fox News’ Gregg Re, Jason Donner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Matt Richardson is an editor for Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @MRichardson713.

  24. Trying to curry favor with rest of the world, assimilated Jews brag about Jewish achievements that benefited others. That is nonsense. Classical Roman authors disparaged Jews for being useless citizens of the world. Despite the idea that “Plato is nothing but Moses speaking Greek,” realistically Jewish input toward the ancient world’s knowledge in next to nil.

    In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, only baptized Jews exerted appreciable influence on gentile thought. In our times, the scores of scientists and artists of Jewish origin are not Jews to practical purposes: they do not lead Jewish lives and their grandchildren are usually not Jewish. The wave of Jewish participation in science and art declines as the developing nations increase their share.

    Most nations have proved intellectually futile on a grand scale. Latin Americans, Ukrainians, and Swedes have introduced very little knowledge to the world’s pool. Germany, the model of intellectual activity, seethed with it for only about a century. Ancient Rome and modern Britain were intellectually active for two or three centuries, and Ancient Greece for just a bit longer.

    Jews enjoyed their religion and themselves while the ancient authors derided them for intellectual emptiness, as having given nothing to the world. And why should we? We owe the world nothing. Our fiduciary obligation is to God, rather than to other nations. We lead the way of life he prescribed. Incidentally, that’s also the most ethical and politically sensible mode of living, and it offers a fine example to the rest of the world. But we’re equally proud of what they see as barbarisms: exterminating the Amalek, the mass murder of Jew-haters in the Persian Empire after Purim, conquering Canaan, bringing the foul-smelling sacrifices in the Temple, and meticulously observing Sabbath.

    We need not prove ourselves before the world, but before its maker.

  25. @ adamdalgliesh:

    The equality of people is no more proven than their inequality. It is socially acceptable to detrimentally generalize about mothers-in-law or to dislike one’s neighbors. It’s okay to discuss the varying intelligence of various breeds of dogs, or to assert that one person is smarter than another. Leftists decry applying that reasoning to nations for a single reason: leftists’ pet groups are always deficient. Leftists find it hard to claim to represent, say, Americans, but position themselves as the heralds of primitive peoples, such as Africans or Arabs.

    Cats are less intellectually advanced than humans, but humans don’t kill cats for that reason. Human beings evolve; modern humans are definitely smarter than Neanderthals. The West and the Middle East evolved differently; Westerners statistically have achieved better than Arabs throughout history. Could all the previous generations have been wrong? Can we imagine that no Arab throughout history was sufficiently educated to come up with a major invention?

    Rational recognition of the statistically different achievements of nations is not the same racism as lynching. Passive dislike doesn’t equal hatred, and surely not actionable hatred. Thoughts are not deeds; Jesus was wrong to equate lust with adultery. Leftists sophistically widen the meaning of racism to accuse the detractors of their pet nations of immorality. By the current standard of racism, books written before the 1960s are generally racist, and the leftists have already censored The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Arabs exploit popular unwillingness to assert their intellectual inferiority.

    Generalization about Arab intellect is presumed immoral, but leftists generalize the other way in presuming Arabs to be good and smart. Generalization and arguing from absence of evidence are accepted scientific methods. We don’t care that the Arabs could have achieved decent intellectual results if they had been forced to attend universities from seventh century onwards; absent positive evidence of their achievements, it is logical to presume them stupid.

    Groups, including nations, are different from each other. Their competition fosters social evolution and progress. In the process, some groups die out. Oil purchases artificially keep the Arab hordes alive.

  26. Nobel Prize Winning DNA Pioneer Stripped of Titles After Sharing His Views on IQ and Race

    Distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner James Watson was stripped of several honorary titles after suggesting our genetic makeup cause differences in IQ tests

    Watson’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory stripped him of his titles following his comments.

    Evidently, acknowledging racial differences in IQ scores is now forbidden — even from one of the greatest scientists of our time.
    Watson’s laboratory condemns the misuse of science to justify prejudice.

    CNN reported:

    A Nobel Prize-winning American scientist who co-discovered DNA has been stripped of his honorary titles at the laboratory he once led after repeating racist comments in a documentary.

    James Watson, who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA alongside Francis Crick in the 1950s based on the work of British chemist Rosalind Franklin, said in a PBS film that genes cause a difference in intelligence between white and black people in IQ tests.

    The 90-year-old’s comments were labeled “reprehensible” by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on New York’s Long Island, where Watson had been the director from 1968 to 1993.

    The laboratory said it “unequivocally rejects the unsubstantiated and reckless personal opinions Dr. James D. Watson expressed,” noting the statements were “reprehensible [and] unsupported by science.”

    James Watson DNA pioneer – honours stripped – fall from grace (USA) – Sky News – 13th January 2019

  29. @ honeybee: Good point.
    @ honeybee:
    Another good point. Also, geneticists have determined that Europeans and Asians are 3 per cent of Neanderthal descent, which Africans have no Neanderthal descent. Did that 3 per cent Neanderthal descent make Europeans and Asians more intelligent than Africans?

  30. @ Edgar G.: I find it very difficult to believe that Jews have a higher genetic intelligence than other people, given the moronic nature of Israel’s political leadership ad rulimg clas of lawyer-bureaucrats. More intelligent people would elect more intelligent leaders, and would not allow a non-elected, self-appointed clique to govern them

  31. @ Ted Belman: Ted, you haven’t republished any articles by the numerous scientists who have expressed doubts as to whether there is a correlation between intelligence and race. On this basis I suspect that you do have an “ulterior motive,” which is sympathy for the white nationalist movement. They are the political force that drives provide writers like Peterson with an audience for thie views.

    For many reasons, the white nationalist movement is bad news for the Jews. For one thing. most of them (although not Peterson personally) are antisemites. Second, these views alienate nearly all “people of color” and their white sympathizers. Identying Israeli interests with white nationalism makes a lot of enemies unnecessarily, and will turn many people away from Israpundit, and maybe even Israel, if they assume your views are common in Israel (they are not).

    Although some deny it, political intelligence, aka sechel, is a real phenomena. For a pro-Israel publication to even give the appearance of endorsing white nationalism shows no sechel.

  32. @ jaywhite39:The major supporters of the intelligence and race correlation are the pschologists who administer and devise these tests. They have an obvious vested interest in finding these tests to be correct.

    It is dubious whether pschologists can be considered scientists. They have no background whatsoever in genetics and human biology, which are the only sciences that can discover whether their is a link between genetically inherited intelligence and race. I have known a lot of psychologists. Each one has his own coxamamie theory to explain human behavior. Many are influenced by “New Age” religious ideas. Their judgment in scientific matters is not to be relied upon.

    Nearly all geneticists and biologists who have investigated this question have found no scientific evidence of a link between race and intelligence. They have not even been able to identify what gnomes are related to intelligence, let alone detrmine the distribution of these gnomes in different racial or ethnic groups. They also have determined that the usual social definitions of “race” do not correspondend to the actual groups with a common descent. Africans, for example, can be divided into several different “races” that have had little genetic contact with each other. And a large part of the earh’s population consists of people of mixed racial origins. All this means that it has not been possible to determine a genetic basis for different IQ test scores by different groups.

    You obviously have a polical agent behind your “scientific” conclusions–your belief that you have been discriminated against because you are a white man. This is a political opinion, not “science” as you claim.

  33. @ nerett0: Some comparative studies of black and white children raised in similar environments have found no signiciant differences in their IQ scores.

    Eyferth (1961) studied the out-of-wedlock children of black and white soldiers stationed in Germany after World War 2 and then raised by white German mothers and found no significant differences.
    Tizard et al. (1972) studied black (West Indian), white, and mixed-race children raised in British long-stay residential nurseries. Two out of three tests found no significant differences. One test found higher scores for non-whites.
    Moore (1986) compared black and mixed-race children adopted by either black or white middle-class families in the United States. Moore observed that 23 black and interracial children raised by white parents had a significantly higher mean score than 23 age-matched children raised by black parents (117 vs 104), and argued that differences in early socialization explained these differences.

  34. @ nerett0: The argument by “emet” is called into question, however, by the fact that many genetic researchers think a correlation between race and genetically inherited intelligence is unlikely.This from Wikipedia:

    Geneticist Alan R. Templeton argues that the question about the possible genetic effects on the test score gap is muddled by the general focus on “race” rather than on populations defined by gene frequency or by geographical proximity, and by the general insistence on phrasing the question in terms of heritability.[139] Templeton points out that racial groups neither represent sub-species nor distinct evolutionary lineages, and that therefore there is no basis for making claims about the general intelligence of races.[139] From this point of view the search for possible genetic influences on the black-white test score gap is a priori flawed, because there is no genetic material shared by all Africans or by all Europeans.

  35. @ honeybee:

    Seemingly not…look how un-elected pinheads are able to run (ruin) Israel…. And found new political parties that won’t even pass the former threshold of 1.8%…like Ya’Alon….!!

    Remember what Churchill said (the cause of so many millions of Jewish deaths in WW2-but he had a caustic-witty side too) when he was walking around with the Director of Bletchley Park and eyeing the sometimes strange looking people that were wandering around…. “I know I told you to leave no stone unturned…but I didn’t expect you to take me so literally…”.

    P.S. ***look up “Bletchley Park”…***

  37. @ honeybee:

    Here is a riddle wrapped up in an enigma for you……..An’ don’ say I nivver give you nuttin’….. Archaeologists and scientists say the the Neanderthal brain cavity was rather larger than that of Homo Sapiens….

  39. @ yamit82:

    Yes, again you are correct…. they compose the Israel bureaucracy and the Jewish Arab lovers. Also the American Liberal Jews. All can trace their origin back to Chelm…..

  42. At the top of the Bell Curve Jews may have a disproportionate # of geniuses but there is also a disproportionate # if morons at the bottom or tail.

  43. @ adamdalgliesh:
    Science cannot be racist. Mean differences in IQ among different racial and ethnic group are pure science, not theory. Ignoring the science of intelligence allows Blacks and other minorities to falsely claim they are victims of discrimination if their percentage of Ivy League students, MDs,university professors, doesn’t equal their percentage of the population it is proof of racial discrimination termed “desperate impact”. In the USA, this anti-white discrimination exists for any government job and almost every full time desirable job. There is a whole industry and areas of state and Federal government devoted solely to promoting anti-white discrimination. The science of intelligence recognizes all groups have a percentage of geniuses.Peterson gives good reasons why IQ differences must be recognized. He gives reasons for Jews in particular, to recognize this when antisemites say Jews are over represented in top positions as if they have stolen them from non Jews. “Political intelligence” is an absurd concept. Higher mean IQ in whites and even higher mean IQ in Ashkenazi Jews are not theories. “Political intelligence” is another term for spineless ass-kissing.
    There is no such thing as political intelligence. Your assertion that this non existent alleged form of intelligence is more important IQ is absurd. Spineless fear of offending blacks is the primary reason an awful anti-Semitic, white hating traitor like Obama, could become President of the USA. Obama wasted more than several trillion dollars and accomplished absolutely nothing. He regards his major achievement as the Iran deal, which, of course greatly helps them obtain nuclear weapons faster and his gift of $50 billion which they can use fund Hezbollah, Hamas, murder Jews all over the world and develop their missile programs more rapidly.

  46. I am utterly baffled by why Ted would push this extremely unpopular cause in a web site devoted to promoting Israeli interests. The idea that blacks are biologically less intelligent than whites is “as popular as Hitler,” and associated in the popular mind with Nazis, the Ku Klux KLan, and Hitler. Both the left and the mainstream right view that doctrine in this light.

    It is true that much of the leadership class among black Americans are antisemites. But not all black Americans are antisemites. Neither are all liberal=minded whites. Why go out of your way to alienate all of them?

    Political intelligence, the ability to size what issues or opinions have political traction is far more important in politics than inherited genetic intelligence. And frankly, pushing theories of innate white intellectual superiority over blacks gives a political intelligence score of zero. Absolutely no sechel. A “Chelmite” level of common sense.