SBF’s Jewish ancestry never occurred to me. He struck me as the talented product of a supremely progressive family (parents are Stanford professors), probably raised to have a high opinion of himself and with the belief that he could and should change the world. A smug child of smug “elites”.
The author’s point about the academic accomplishments of Jews is very interesting though not new. The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel. There may be some truth to that but, at least in the sciences, the Jewish contribution is so big, and of such a fundamental nature, it’s hard to believe it all comes down to study and hard work: Einstein, Von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and later Feynman. They possessed extraordinary intelligence.
The Ashkenazi,Jews have the highest IQ of any people in every IQ table – they hold an astounding number of Nobel Prizes… and so on.
Hong Kong Chinese run about second – High Caste Hindu maybe third… If I may dare to suggest all are not the same…
”The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel.”
yea, well it works for them…
And then there is IQ as in Math, and puzzle solving, and then literature, and entertainment and engineering and politics – and having one does not mean having the other, but the ones mentioned seem to have them all, which is really unique.
Good point, but it’s possible that the impermanence of the Jewish experience of home, i.e. their constantly having to up sticks due to persecution, has conferred an ability to ‘think outside the box’.
Intelligence alone doesn’t explain the leaps of imagination required for the kinds of theoretical breakthroughs seen in Physics and other fields.
Yes. And just imagine where they would be today if they didn’t have to rely on their smarts and connections, but rather had to rely on reparations, preferred admission to colleges, jobs and positions of leadership.
Yes. And just imagine where they would be today if they didn’t have to rely on their smarts and connections, but rather had to rely on reparations, preferred admission to colleges, jobs and positions of leadership.
In terms of their educational expectations, it is rather more specific than merely valuing it, it is fundamental to Jewish reigious practice for children, both male and female, to learn to read and write from a young age. That has meant that the literacy rates of their communities have vastly exceeded those of the other communities around them for centuries.
That has inevitable knock on effects: it has meant they’ve been well placed to determine which of their children show natural intellectual talent, and which children may need more support, for far longer than most other communities, and because they have largely consisted of small homogenous communities that have been to varied degrees excluded from wider communities where they have lived, and been forced to move about to avoid the worst discrimination and persecution, it has created a far greater incentive to further the skillsets of their children than can be found in modern universal education systems and made it far easier for them to allocate their own resources to that task.
It’s hard to not view this as a kind of soft social engineering to be honest, because over time, it has meant that their most intellectually talented members have established more senior positions in their religious communities, to form marriages between those with similar intellectual skills, and accrue the resources and wealth to again maximise the skillsets of the next generation.
So it is very hard to ascribe this to them simply being “extraordinarily intelligent” by nature, as it is likely a complicated mixture of both nature and nurture. However, it is very hard to argue that the combination has led to their communities producing some incredibly skilled, talented and clever individuals.
I totally agree. The so-called People of the Book. IQ metrics which purport to measure innate intelligence can increase or decrease over time according to study or lack thereof (even on tests of the less “fakeable” kind, like analogies or spatial reasoning). The tests correlate with potential and inner ability but do not encompass or reveal all about a human intellectual apparatus we do not and may never fully understand.
Take identical twins and send them at birth to two different households: one a book-lined acreage with a scientist father and stay-at-home mother who is a published author, the other a trailer with near-illiterate, mostly unemployed parents on drugs. Will the IQs of these genetically identical children be exactly the same at age 18?
Believe it or not, there are a *ton* of identical twin studies out there, and yes, nature beats nurture including in IQ/intelligence. It truly is amazing.
I do believe it and it’s not news to me. So there is never any discrepancy in measured intelligence according to environment? Of course this gets tricky because there are variations even among supposedly identical siblings, in the same household. Perhaps my thought experiment chooses an inapt example.
But while nature may prevail over (trump) nurture in many instances, it does not erase its importance.
From an identical twin study: “The Minnesota researchers found that about 70 percent of IQ variation across the twin population was due to genetic differences among people, and 30 percent was due to environmental differences” source: https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html.
Not that this negates your comment but I think it supports mine: the answer to the nature or nurture “question” is…yes, both. I acknowledge that with personality and intelligence, nature tends to exert a notably stronger sway. Strong correlation, not sole causation.
I do believe it and it’s not news to me. So there is never any discrepancy in measured intelligence according to environment? Of course this gets tricky because there are variations even among supposedly identical siblings, in the same household. Perhaps my thought experiment chooses an inapt example.
But while nature may prevail over (trump) nurture in many instances, it does not erase its importance.
From an identical twin study: “The Minnesota researchers found that about 70 percent of IQ variation across the twin population was due to genetic differences among people, and 30 percent was due to environmental differences” source: https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html.
Not that this negates your comment but I think it supports mine: the answer to the nature or nurture “question” is…yes, both. I acknowledge that with personality and intelligence, nature tends to exert a notably stronger sway. Strong correlation, not sole causation.
Believe it or not, there are a *ton* of identical twin studies out there, and yes, nature beats nurture including in IQ/intelligence. It truly is amazing.
I totally agree. The so-called People of the Book. IQ metrics which purport to measure innate intelligence can increase or decrease over time according to study or lack thereof (even on tests of the less “fakeable” kind, like analogies or spatial reasoning). The tests correlate with potential and inner ability but do not encompass or reveal all about a human intellectual apparatus we do not and may never fully understand.
Take identical twins and send them at birth to two different households: one a book-lined acreage with a scientist father and stay-at-home mother who is a published author, the other a trailer with near-illiterate, mostly unemployed parents on drugs. Will the IQs of these genetically identical children be exactly the same at age 18?
No, it simply isn’t. Why would you, a Classicist agnostic, ascribe such divine-scripture-like perfection to our ability to understand, let alone precisely measure, our own mental capacities?
“Eysenck solved it, QED”–ha!
No, it simply isn’t. Why would you, a Classicist agnostic, ascribe such divine-scripture-like perfection to our ability to understand, let alone precisely measure, our own mental capacities?
“Eysenck solved it, QED”–ha!
The Ashkenazi,Jews have the highest IQ of any people in every IQ table – they hold an astounding number of Nobel Prizes… and so on.
Hong Kong Chinese run about second – High Caste Hindu maybe third… If I may dare to suggest all are not the same…
”The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel.”
yea, well it works for them…
And then there is IQ as in Math, and puzzle solving, and then literature, and entertainment and engineering and politics – and having one does not mean having the other, but the ones mentioned seem to have them all, which is really unique.
Good point, but it’s possible that the impermanence of the Jewish experience of home, i.e. their constantly having to up sticks due to persecution, has conferred an ability to ‘think outside the box’.
Intelligence alone doesn’t explain the leaps of imagination required for the kinds of theoretical breakthroughs seen in Physics and other fields.
In terms of their educational expectations, it is rather more specific than merely valuing it, it is fundamental to Jewish reigious practice for children, both male and female, to learn to read and write from a young age. That has meant that the literacy rates of their communities have vastly exceeded those of the other communities around them for centuries.
That has inevitable knock on effects: it has meant they’ve been well placed to determine which of their children show natural intellectual talent, and which children may need more support, for far longer than most other communities, and because they have largely consisted of small homogenous communities that have been to varied degrees excluded from wider communities where they have lived, and been forced to move about to avoid the worst discrimination and persecution, it has created a far greater incentive to further the skillsets of their children than can be found in modern universal education systems and made it far easier for them to allocate their own resources to that task.
It’s hard to not view this as a kind of soft social engineering to be honest, because over time, it has meant that their most intellectually talented members have established more senior positions in their religious communities, to form marriages between those with similar intellectual skills, and accrue the resources and wealth to again maximise the skillsets of the next generation.
So it is very hard to ascribe this to them simply being “extraordinarily intelligent” by nature, as it is likely a complicated mixture of both nature and nurture. However, it is very hard to argue that the combination has led to their communities producing some incredibly skilled, talented and clever individuals.
The late Professor Hans Eysenck answered this particular conundrum years ago. It’s all about hereditary IQ.
J Bryant
1 year ago
SBF’s Jewish ancestry never occurred to me. He struck me as the talented product of a supremely progressive family (parents are Stanford professors), probably raised to have a high opinion of himself and with the belief that he could and should change the world. A smug child of smug “elites”.
The author’s point about the academic accomplishments of Jews is very interesting though not new. The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel. There may be some truth to that but, at least in the sciences, the Jewish contribution is so big, and of such a fundamental nature, it’s hard to believe it all comes down to study and hard work: Einstein, Von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and later Feynman. They possessed extraordinary intelligence.
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
I rather like Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of the “intransigent small minority.” A small minority has to be paranoid because you never know when the ruling class needs to set you up as a scapegoat, right Adolf?
But the thing that amazes me is that the Jews seem to have maintained their religious and ethnic identity for over three thousand years. That is astonishing.
Perhaps their extraordinary survival can be attributed to Judaism being a matrilineal religion. For thousands of years Jews have been conquered and abused but because the offspring of Jewish women are a priori Jews they have survived from Egypt and Babylon and onwards, whereas tribes such as the patrilineal Hittites have left little trace of themselves because their males were slaughtered or enslaved by war and so became absorbed by succeeding tribes.Jewish bloodlines and DNA contain many disparate contributions, all talented in some way, for instance mathematics, arts and music etcetera, emanating from Ethiopia to the Deserts of Arabia and all points of the compass.In many ways Jews are the human race in microcosm.
Perhaps their extraordinary survival can be attributed to Judaism being a matrilineal religion. For thousands of years Jews have been conquered and abused but because the offspring of Jewish women are a priori Jews they have survived from Egypt and Babylon and onwards, whereas tribes such as the patrilineal Hittites have left little trace of themselves because their males were slaughtered or enslaved by war and so became absorbed by succeeding tribes.Jewish bloodlines and DNA contain many disparate contributions, all talented in some way, for instance mathematics, arts and music etcetera, emanating from Ethiopia to the Deserts of Arabia and all points of the compass.In many ways Jews are the human race in microcosm.
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
I rather like Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of the “intransigent small minority.” A small minority has to be paranoid because you never know when the ruling class needs to set you up as a scapegoat, right Adolf?
But the thing that amazes me is that the Jews seem to have maintained their religious and ethnic identity for over three thousand years. That is astonishing.
Martin Brumby
1 year ago
Any good natured person acquainted with the facts must acknowledge the tremendous contribution made to civilisation, art, science by the Jews.
But it is strange that anti-Semitism is now burgeoning across the West, especially amongst Socialists and the Woke. Even amongst the Jewish diaspora in Europe and America, some Jews often seem to fall over themselves to criticise Israel and to make excuses for the vicious behaviour of many “Palestinian” Arabs who still hold Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, close to their hearts.
OK. I could write a pamphlet about all the things Israel has got wrong. The deal with Pfizer for a kick-off. But I could write a big fat book about the things Israel has got absolutely right, even surrounded with some of the World’s worst neighbours.
But look at the number of Jews who still claim there was no anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party and who are quite happy making films promoting lies about Israel.
Just cowardice? Certainly few signs of intelligence in that group.
Martin Brumby
1 year ago
Any good natured person acquainted with the facts must acknowledge the tremendous contribution made to civilisation, art, science by the Jews.
But it is strange that anti-Semitism is now burgeoning across the West, especially amongst Socialists and the Woke. Even amongst the Jewish diaspora in Europe and America, some Jews often seem to fall over themselves to criticise Israel and to make excuses for the vicious behaviour of many “Palestinian” Arabs who still hold Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, close to their hearts.
OK. I could write a pamphlet about all the things Israel has got wrong. The deal with Pfizer for a kick-off. But I could write a big fat book about the things Israel has got absolutely right, even surrounded with some of the World’s worst neighbours.
But look at the number of Jews who still claim there was no anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party and who are quite happy making films promoting lies about Israel.
Just cowardice? Certainly few signs of intelligence in that group.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
What is now so chilling in the woke National Socialist US infected nu britn that we dwell in, is that to quote empirically factual evidence that Jewish and Indian Hindu people outperform us all in every sphere is now almost a criminal offence, as to, by the same token, use similar factual evidence to illustrate the woeful under performance of Africa, Africans and certain Islamic countries. Why?
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
What is now so chilling in the woke National Socialist US infected nu britn that we dwell in, is that to quote empirically factual evidence that Jewish and Indian Hindu people outperform us all in every sphere is now almost a criminal offence, as to, by the same token, use similar factual evidence to illustrate the woeful under performance of Africa, Africans and certain Islamic countries. Why?
Chris Milburn
1 year ago
“ultra-loose monetary policies” and “lack of oversight” suggests that if we just had (yet) another federal regulatory organization, fools would stop being parted from their money.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. To my understanding, there are already about 17 financial regulatory agencies in the USA. If they were only bigger, or we had an 18th, things would be better?
What about personal responsibility instead? I have little sympathy for those who were “going for the big score” with an investment that, with only 30 minutes of reading could have been easily seen to be a Ponzi scheme.
I’d rather not have more of my (well, not mine, since I’m Canadian) tax money taken by the government to protect idiots from their own greed.
“The ultimate result of shielding man from his folly is to fill the world with fools”.
Chris Milburn
1 year ago
“ultra-loose monetary policies” and “lack of oversight” suggests that if we just had (yet) another federal regulatory organization, fools would stop being parted from their money.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. To my understanding, there are already about 17 financial regulatory agencies in the USA. If they were only bigger, or we had an 18th, things would be better?
What about personal responsibility instead? I have little sympathy for those who were “going for the big score” with an investment that, with only 30 minutes of reading could have been easily seen to be a Ponzi scheme.
I’d rather not have more of my (well, not mine, since I’m Canadian) tax money taken by the government to protect idiots from their own greed.
“The ultimate result of shielding man from his folly is to fill the world with fools”.
Martin Smith
1 year ago
New York’s Jewish gangs helped break the British embargo on Jewish emigration to Palestine post 1945, and also shipped guns to the Jewish terrorists.
New York’s Jewish gangs helped break the British embargo on Jewish emigration to Palestine post 1945, and also shipped guns to the Jewish terrorists.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Harvey Weinstein??? The women he’s in prison for “abusing” were all willing participants on the casting couch ladder to success in Hollywood. He’s gross, but he’s not a criminal. Someone powerful just wanted him punished and out of the way.
Why do you think you can so confidently declare willingness on their collective behalf?
It’s one thing to say they knew or ought have known they were playing a certain kind of game, but some of Weinstein’s many alleged, now adjudicated offenses were criminal, and violent. Signing up to play the Hollywood game is not carte blanche to be manhandled–especially when the dude is so ugly.
Why do you think you can so confidently declare willingness on their collective behalf?
It’s one thing to say they knew or ought have known they were playing a certain kind of game, but some of Weinstein’s many alleged, now adjudicated offenses were criminal, and violent. Signing up to play the Hollywood game is not carte blanche to be manhandled–especially when the dude is so ugly.
Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Harvey Weinstein??? The women he’s in prison for “abusing” were all willing participants on the casting couch ladder to success in Hollywood. He’s gross, but he’s not a criminal. Someone powerful just wanted him punished and out of the way.
Tony Taylor
1 year ago
Fred “Bugsy” Siegel to his nefarious associates in the learning business.
Last edited 1 year ago by Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
1 year ago
Fred “Bugsy” Siegel to his nefarious associates in the learning business.
SBF’s Jewish ancestry never occurred to me. He struck me as the talented product of a supremely progressive family (parents are Stanford professors), probably raised to have a high opinion of himself and with the belief that he could and should change the world. A smug child of smug “elites”.
The author’s point about the academic accomplishments of Jews is very interesting though not new. The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel. There may be some truth to that but, at least in the sciences, the Jewish contribution is so big, and of such a fundamental nature, it’s hard to believe it all comes down to study and hard work: Einstein, Von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and later Feynman. They possessed extraordinary intelligence.
The Ashkenazi,Jews have the highest IQ of any people in every IQ table – they hold an astounding number of Nobel Prizes… and so on.
Hong Kong Chinese run about second – High Caste Hindu maybe third… If I may dare to suggest all are not the same…
”The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel.”
yea, well it works for them…
And then there is IQ as in Math, and puzzle solving, and then literature, and entertainment and engineering and politics – and having one does not mean having the other, but the ones mentioned seem to have them all, which is really unique.
Good point, but it’s possible that the impermanence of the Jewish experience of home, i.e. their constantly having to up sticks due to persecution, has conferred an ability to ‘think outside the box’.
Intelligence alone doesn’t explain the leaps of imagination required for the kinds of theoretical breakthroughs seen in Physics and other fields.
Yes. And just imagine where they would be today if they didn’t have to rely on their smarts and connections, but rather had to rely on reparations, preferred admission to colleges, jobs and positions of leadership.
And it certainly wasn’t due to affirmative action and DEI efforts over the last 5,000 years.
The struggle is not only real, but rewarding.
Yes. And just imagine where they would be today if they didn’t have to rely on their smarts and connections, but rather had to rely on reparations, preferred admission to colleges, jobs and positions of leadership.
And it certainly wasn’t due to affirmative action and DEI efforts over the last 5,000 years.
The struggle is not only real, but rewarding.
In terms of their educational expectations, it is rather more specific than merely valuing it, it is fundamental to Jewish reigious practice for children, both male and female, to learn to read and write from a young age. That has meant that the literacy rates of their communities have vastly exceeded those of the other communities around them for centuries.
That has inevitable knock on effects: it has meant they’ve been well placed to determine which of their children show natural intellectual talent, and which children may need more support, for far longer than most other communities, and because they have largely consisted of small homogenous communities that have been to varied degrees excluded from wider communities where they have lived, and been forced to move about to avoid the worst discrimination and persecution, it has created a far greater incentive to further the skillsets of their children than can be found in modern universal education systems and made it far easier for them to allocate their own resources to that task.
It’s hard to not view this as a kind of soft social engineering to be honest, because over time, it has meant that their most intellectually talented members have established more senior positions in their religious communities, to form marriages between those with similar intellectual skills, and accrue the resources and wealth to again maximise the skillsets of the next generation.
So it is very hard to ascribe this to them simply being “extraordinarily intelligent” by nature, as it is likely a complicated mixture of both nature and nurture. However, it is very hard to argue that the combination has led to their communities producing some incredibly skilled, talented and clever individuals.
I totally agree. The so-called People of the Book. IQ metrics which purport to measure innate intelligence can increase or decrease over time according to study or lack thereof (even on tests of the less “fakeable” kind, like analogies or spatial reasoning). The tests correlate with potential and inner ability but do not encompass or reveal all about a human intellectual apparatus we do not and may never fully understand.
Take identical twins and send them at birth to two different households: one a book-lined acreage with a scientist father and stay-at-home mother who is a published author, the other a trailer with near-illiterate, mostly unemployed parents on drugs. Will the IQs of these genetically identical children be exactly the same at age 18?
Believe it or not, there are a *ton* of identical twin studies out there, and yes, nature beats nurture including in IQ/intelligence. It truly is amazing.
I do believe it and it’s not news to me. So there is never any discrepancy in measured intelligence according to environment? Of course this gets tricky because there are variations even among supposedly identical siblings, in the same household. Perhaps my thought experiment chooses an inapt example.
But while nature may prevail over (trump) nurture in many instances, it does not erase its importance.
From an identical twin study: “The Minnesota researchers found that about 70 percent of IQ variation across the twin population was due to genetic differences among people, and 30 percent was due to environmental differences” source: https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html.
Not that this negates your comment but I think it supports mine: the answer to the nature or nurture “question” is…yes, both. I acknowledge that with personality and intelligence, nature tends to exert a notably stronger sway. Strong correlation, not sole causation.
I do believe it and it’s not news to me. So there is never any discrepancy in measured intelligence according to environment? Of course this gets tricky because there are variations even among supposedly identical siblings, in the same household. Perhaps my thought experiment chooses an inapt example.
But while nature may prevail over (trump) nurture in many instances, it does not erase its importance.
From an identical twin study: “The Minnesota researchers found that about 70 percent of IQ variation across the twin population was due to genetic differences among people, and 30 percent was due to environmental differences” source: https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html.
Not that this negates your comment but I think it supports mine: the answer to the nature or nurture “question” is…yes, both. I acknowledge that with personality and intelligence, nature tends to exert a notably stronger sway. Strong correlation, not sole causation.
Believe it or not, there are a *ton* of identical twin studies out there, and yes, nature beats nurture including in IQ/intelligence. It truly is amazing.
I totally agree. The so-called People of the Book. IQ metrics which purport to measure innate intelligence can increase or decrease over time according to study or lack thereof (even on tests of the less “fakeable” kind, like analogies or spatial reasoning). The tests correlate with potential and inner ability but do not encompass or reveal all about a human intellectual apparatus we do not and may never fully understand.
Take identical twins and send them at birth to two different households: one a book-lined acreage with a scientist father and stay-at-home mother who is a published author, the other a trailer with near-illiterate, mostly unemployed parents on drugs. Will the IQs of these genetically identical children be exactly the same at age 18?
The late Professor Hans Eysenck answered this particular conundrum years ago. It’s all about hereditary IQ.
No, it simply isn’t. Why would you, a Classicist agnostic, ascribe such divine-scripture-like perfection to our ability to understand, let alone precisely measure, our own mental capacities?
“Eysenck solved it, QED”–ha!
Somebody has to play Devil’s Advocate.
Understood.
Understood.
Somebody has to play Devil’s Advocate.
No, it simply isn’t. Why would you, a Classicist agnostic, ascribe such divine-scripture-like perfection to our ability to understand, let alone precisely measure, our own mental capacities?
“Eysenck solved it, QED”–ha!
The Ashkenazi,Jews have the highest IQ of any people in every IQ table – they hold an astounding number of Nobel Prizes… and so on.
Hong Kong Chinese run about second – High Caste Hindu maybe third… If I may dare to suggest all are not the same…
”The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel.”
yea, well it works for them…
And then there is IQ as in Math, and puzzle solving, and then literature, and entertainment and engineering and politics – and having one does not mean having the other, but the ones mentioned seem to have them all, which is really unique.
Good point, but it’s possible that the impermanence of the Jewish experience of home, i.e. their constantly having to up sticks due to persecution, has conferred an ability to ‘think outside the box’.
Intelligence alone doesn’t explain the leaps of imagination required for the kinds of theoretical breakthroughs seen in Physics and other fields.
In terms of their educational expectations, it is rather more specific than merely valuing it, it is fundamental to Jewish reigious practice for children, both male and female, to learn to read and write from a young age. That has meant that the literacy rates of their communities have vastly exceeded those of the other communities around them for centuries.
That has inevitable knock on effects: it has meant they’ve been well placed to determine which of their children show natural intellectual talent, and which children may need more support, for far longer than most other communities, and because they have largely consisted of small homogenous communities that have been to varied degrees excluded from wider communities where they have lived, and been forced to move about to avoid the worst discrimination and persecution, it has created a far greater incentive to further the skillsets of their children than can be found in modern universal education systems and made it far easier for them to allocate their own resources to that task.
It’s hard to not view this as a kind of soft social engineering to be honest, because over time, it has meant that their most intellectually talented members have established more senior positions in their religious communities, to form marriages between those with similar intellectual skills, and accrue the resources and wealth to again maximise the skillsets of the next generation.
So it is very hard to ascribe this to them simply being “extraordinarily intelligent” by nature, as it is likely a complicated mixture of both nature and nurture. However, it is very hard to argue that the combination has led to their communities producing some incredibly skilled, talented and clever individuals.
The late Professor Hans Eysenck answered this particular conundrum years ago. It’s all about hereditary IQ.
SBF’s Jewish ancestry never occurred to me. He struck me as the talented product of a supremely progressive family (parents are Stanford professors), probably raised to have a high opinion of himself and with the belief that he could and should change the world. A smug child of smug “elites”.
The author’s point about the academic accomplishments of Jews is very interesting though not new. The standard explanation is that, on average, Jewish families value education and encourage their kids to excel. There may be some truth to that but, at least in the sciences, the Jewish contribution is so big, and of such a fundamental nature, it’s hard to believe it all comes down to study and hard work: Einstein, Von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, and later Feynman. They possessed extraordinary intelligence.
I rather like Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of the “intransigent small minority.” A small minority has to be paranoid because you never know when the ruling class needs to set you up as a scapegoat, right Adolf?
But the thing that amazes me is that the Jews seem to have maintained their religious and ethnic identity for over three thousand years. That is astonishing.
It’s not only astonishing but promised by the God of the Bible in Genesis 12.
Perhaps their extraordinary survival can be attributed to Judaism being a matrilineal religion. For thousands of years Jews have been conquered and abused but because the offspring of Jewish women are a priori Jews they have survived from Egypt and Babylon and onwards, whereas tribes such as the patrilineal Hittites have left little trace of themselves because their males were slaughtered or enslaved by war and so became absorbed by succeeding tribes.Jewish bloodlines and DNA contain many disparate contributions, all talented in some way, for instance mathematics, arts and music etcetera, emanating from Ethiopia to the Deserts of Arabia and all points of the compass.In many ways Jews are the human race in microcosm.
It’s not only astonishing but promised by the God of the Bible in Genesis 12.
Perhaps their extraordinary survival can be attributed to Judaism being a matrilineal religion. For thousands of years Jews have been conquered and abused but because the offspring of Jewish women are a priori Jews they have survived from Egypt and Babylon and onwards, whereas tribes such as the patrilineal Hittites have left little trace of themselves because their males were slaughtered or enslaved by war and so became absorbed by succeeding tribes.Jewish bloodlines and DNA contain many disparate contributions, all talented in some way, for instance mathematics, arts and music etcetera, emanating from Ethiopia to the Deserts of Arabia and all points of the compass.In many ways Jews are the human race in microcosm.
I rather like Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of the “intransigent small minority.” A small minority has to be paranoid because you never know when the ruling class needs to set you up as a scapegoat, right Adolf?
But the thing that amazes me is that the Jews seem to have maintained their religious and ethnic identity for over three thousand years. That is astonishing.
Any good natured person acquainted with the facts must acknowledge the tremendous contribution made to civilisation, art, science by the Jews.
But it is strange that anti-Semitism is now burgeoning across the West, especially amongst Socialists and the Woke. Even amongst the Jewish diaspora in Europe and America, some Jews often seem to fall over themselves to criticise Israel and to make excuses for the vicious behaviour of many “Palestinian” Arabs who still hold Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, close to their hearts.
OK. I could write a pamphlet about all the things Israel has got wrong. The deal with Pfizer for a kick-off. But I could write a big fat book about the things Israel has got absolutely right, even surrounded with some of the World’s worst neighbours.
But look at the number of Jews who still claim there was no anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party and who are quite happy making films promoting lies about Israel.
Just cowardice? Certainly few signs of intelligence in that group.
Any good natured person acquainted with the facts must acknowledge the tremendous contribution made to civilisation, art, science by the Jews.
But it is strange that anti-Semitism is now burgeoning across the West, especially amongst Socialists and the Woke. Even amongst the Jewish diaspora in Europe and America, some Jews often seem to fall over themselves to criticise Israel and to make excuses for the vicious behaviour of many “Palestinian” Arabs who still hold Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, close to their hearts.
OK. I could write a pamphlet about all the things Israel has got wrong. The deal with Pfizer for a kick-off. But I could write a big fat book about the things Israel has got absolutely right, even surrounded with some of the World’s worst neighbours.
But look at the number of Jews who still claim there was no anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party and who are quite happy making films promoting lies about Israel.
Just cowardice? Certainly few signs of intelligence in that group.
What is now so chilling in the woke National Socialist US infected nu britn that we dwell in, is that to quote empirically factual evidence that Jewish and Indian Hindu people outperform us all in every sphere is now almost a criminal offence, as to, by the same token, use similar factual evidence to illustrate the woeful under performance of Africa, Africans and certain Islamic countries. Why?
What is now so chilling in the woke National Socialist US infected nu britn that we dwell in, is that to quote empirically factual evidence that Jewish and Indian Hindu people outperform us all in every sphere is now almost a criminal offence, as to, by the same token, use similar factual evidence to illustrate the woeful under performance of Africa, Africans and certain Islamic countries. Why?
“ultra-loose monetary policies” and “lack of oversight” suggests that if we just had (yet) another federal regulatory organization, fools would stop being parted from their money.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. To my understanding, there are already about 17 financial regulatory agencies in the USA. If they were only bigger, or we had an 18th, things would be better?
What about personal responsibility instead? I have little sympathy for those who were “going for the big score” with an investment that, with only 30 minutes of reading could have been easily seen to be a Ponzi scheme.
I’d rather not have more of my (well, not mine, since I’m Canadian) tax money taken by the government to protect idiots from their own greed.
“The ultimate result of shielding man from his folly is to fill the world with fools”.
“ultra-loose monetary policies” and “lack of oversight” suggests that if we just had (yet) another federal regulatory organization, fools would stop being parted from their money.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. To my understanding, there are already about 17 financial regulatory agencies in the USA. If they were only bigger, or we had an 18th, things would be better?
What about personal responsibility instead? I have little sympathy for those who were “going for the big score” with an investment that, with only 30 minutes of reading could have been easily seen to be a Ponzi scheme.
I’d rather not have more of my (well, not mine, since I’m Canadian) tax money taken by the government to protect idiots from their own greed.
“The ultimate result of shielding man from his folly is to fill the world with fools”.
New York’s Jewish gangs helped break the British embargo on Jewish emigration to Palestine post 1945, and also shipped guns to the Jewish terrorists.
Bit like NORAID and the Plastic Paddies then?
Bit like NORAID and the Plastic Paddies then?
New York’s Jewish gangs helped break the British embargo on Jewish emigration to Palestine post 1945, and also shipped guns to the Jewish terrorists.
Harvey Weinstein??? The women he’s in prison for “abusing” were all willing participants on the casting couch ladder to success in Hollywood. He’s gross, but he’s not a criminal. Someone powerful just wanted him punished and out of the way.
Why do you think you can so confidently declare willingness on their collective behalf?
It’s one thing to say they knew or ought have known they were playing a certain kind of game, but some of Weinstein’s many alleged, now adjudicated offenses were criminal, and violent. Signing up to play the Hollywood game is not carte blanche to be manhandled–especially when the dude is so ugly.
As Plato put it:
“What a handsome face he had: but if he were naked you would forget he had a face, he is so beautiful in every way.”
As Plato put it:
“What a handsome face he had: but if he were naked you would forget he had a face, he is so beautiful in every way.”
Why do you think you can so confidently declare willingness on their collective behalf?
It’s one thing to say they knew or ought have known they were playing a certain kind of game, but some of Weinstein’s many alleged, now adjudicated offenses were criminal, and violent. Signing up to play the Hollywood game is not carte blanche to be manhandled–especially when the dude is so ugly.
Harvey Weinstein??? The women he’s in prison for “abusing” were all willing participants on the casting couch ladder to success in Hollywood. He’s gross, but he’s not a criminal. Someone powerful just wanted him punished and out of the way.
Fred “Bugsy” Siegel to his nefarious associates in the learning business.
Fred “Bugsy” Siegel to his nefarious associates in the learning business.