Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Hang around with more MsOT, and you will ask , is it good for the Jews?, instead of referring to concern for the well being of the Jews.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Or maybe it's all about culture.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Umm, fuck you. I don’t need to “hang around” Jews more. They live in my house.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I have no idea what you are saying, but do know you ignore his main point and are still on your own agenda.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I’m open to the argument. But I suspect that’s also near impossible to prove. I think the more fair argument is culture impacts genetics in a way that renders genetics an unreliable measurement.

And geography has a lot to do with it as well.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Then they can explain to you that Jews would say, is it good for the Jews, while goyim would express concern for the well being of the Jews. You're a storyteller. Your ear for dialogue is usually much better than that.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

If his main point is that Jews are smarter than other people, my point is that the answer is in culture, not genetics, as I was saying on this site a few days ago before we were talking about anti-Semitism. Pay attention to something other than the inside of your own ass.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Read Cowen's review of Murray again. If it's near impossible to prove that culture matters more, it's equally near impossible to prove that genetics matters more, but that doesn't stop an awful lot of people (like Murray) from working very hard to justify a prior that it's genetics.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Stephens’ main point is flawed. He’s taken two highly arbitrary measurements and extrapolated from them that a group possesses unique genius.

You cannot take two data points and make a broad pronouncement about a huge group based upon them.

And as to your 150 years comment, WASPS have had a stranglehold on most of the power in the developed world. By any measure, they were the most dominant group of the last 150 years. Before and alongside them you’d cite the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which controlled so much of Europe for so long and still has immense power today. Is anyone out there claiming the WASPs and Catholic Church hierarchy of old were uniquely smart? No. Why? Because it was largely a cultural phenomenon.

If Stephens said Ashkenazi culture values intellectual endeavor and this is reflected in its contributions, there’d be nothing controversial. But he has to go for the metrics. And the metrics on genetics are impossible because they always favor a focus on the outliers. And that’s just to start. The holes one can poke in the argument Nobel acquisition is a valid measurement can’t be counted.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

The man’s article made your point. I said it made sense.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I don’t dispute that at all. I didn’t mean to suggest one could be proved more easily than the other. I don’t think either can be proved, or the impacts of each upon the other can be adequately understood.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You all have IQs between 110 and 120, yes? Just trust me. #inthe30s. I’m out.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You and I agree on a great many things, so I am puzzled by your innate hostility whenever the topic turns to what is good and bad for the Jews. I blame your environment.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

No offense, but not sure you have that agency, but if we do have it, I know what I blame about you and I don’t want to.

Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

In English next time, please.

Re: Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

I thought you stopped drinking🙁

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I do not understand genetics anywhere near as well as many of my clients or my children, but the whole idea of genetics as somehow being immutable - "its in his genes" is a fundamental problem as well. We may be born with some built-in genetic "coding", but that coding won't even guarantee we'll have the same hair color or eye color our whole life.

Likewise, intelligence seems to have a lot to do with how we use the brains we're given, and one thing we know is that the brain changes with use, and can be affected by things like learning a new language (learning a more symbolic language, for example, will light up different parts of the brain and result in different gene signalling). Genes may give you the possibility of having strong symbolic reasoning, but if you don't use them, because you are born into an English speaking family, for example, your genetic signalling shifts because genes apparently don't like to scream into a void (metaphorically).

I'm just saying, the whole "nature/nurture" debate is framed around a really simplistic and kind of weird concept of nature.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

By the way, one issue with IQ tests is figuring out what they actually test. There is a big symbolic reasoning section of the test. Surprise! You score better on that if you use a more symbolic and less phonetic form of written language. Is that testing intelligence?

Likewise, a number of items test the speed of certain reactions. If you use a more complex processing approach to a problem - your brain synapses take a longer trip around - you may not react as fast, but you may process more total data about whatever you are looking at along the way. Is speed of processing intelligence?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Yup. The interactions between nature and nurture are impossibly complex. Attempting to tease out which impact is greater seems an effort to understand in the simplest possible manner (pitting one element versus another) something that is unique in each person.

But in this data-rules-all age of ours, doing so is a highly attractive endeavor. Every anthropologist wants to be the guy who authored the study that gets him a TED talk where can say, "We're all wired for genius, or not, from the start." If nothing else, this provides a nice justification of wealth inequality. It isn't luck... It's predestination! Peter Thiel might invite you over for dinner.

This is why I think it's necessary to take on the "science" offered by those saying it's all nature. The argument must be dismantled with precision at every turn or it'll take hold. In a world where disadvantage mires so many in poverty and society increasingly resembles John Edwards' "two Americas," allowing the notion that the bottom half are all destined to be there leads to some terrifically bad policy possibilities.

Data is increasingly being used to justify sloppy conclusions. It's easy to dress up as infallible and it provides a neat shortcut around what would be much longer and far more rigorous and individualized assessments. Those who traffic in it are like epidemiologists. They have a use, but it's limited.

Re: Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

No offense, but not sure you gave that agency, but if we do have it, I know what I blame about you and I don’t want to.

Re: Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

At least correct the typo that I corrected.

Re: Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

No offense, but not sure you have that agency, but if we do have it, I know what I blame about you and I don’t want to.

Whoops, I missed that there was a typo. Probably because fixing it doesn't make the sentence any more coherent.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

And this would have been a welcome response last night. Instead I was hit with blogs "discrediting" the piece by running with a single background sentence and totally ignoring his thesis.

I am in the middle of working out a Moth story about a revelation about the Ashkenazi.

I know one thing about social sciences- I have only read a few Sci Fi books, but I did read Foundation. There is a point (a fictional one, but one that resonated) that as long as man was limited to a single planet's population the numbers were too small for sociology or psychology to make group predictions- but once you get to galactic populations those sciences become very accurate. Of course we live in single planet times, so.... group predictions are probably a bit flawed.

But I did find Bret's thesis interesting. I mean, is there a group that is more homogeneous than the Ashkenazi? The point hit me when the wife and I did the 23 and Me.

I'm 4% African, 2% Native American, 1% Arab- meaning the test dives down to 1% levels. And while my mom's folks were born in a tiny town on the Ionian, I am not 50% Italian. I'm 30% Italian and 20% Greek. My grandma did not fuck someone other than g-pa, so I think that means the test goes back 1000s of years. Their part of Italy was settled by Greeks, but in like 500 BC.

Meanwhile my wife is 100% Ashkenazi. And we have 10 friends in our tiny neighborhood that are 100%. How is that possible? It dives down to 1%, and goes back 2000 years, and. She. Is. 100%. And so are 10 others within a few blocks.

And it occurred to me, this is a really fucking closed group. If any group can show how a culture can influence it is this one.

Her grandparents (and those of the other 10) came here around 1900. They left ghettos in Russia/Ukraine where their families had lived for centuries. There were matchmakers who picked who would breed with whom. Good Ole Hank would not have gotten near the wife back then.

And they settled in US neighborhoods that were heavily Ashkenazi*. That, combined with complications of the religion (eat Kosher as an example) meant that her parents generation mostly married other Ashkenazi. In fact her older cousins raised in that same neighborhood married Jews/

Her parents, and many others, married and moved to suburbs, and dropped the religious constricts (first time I met the in-laws the wife had to ask her mom to make me something other than bacon as I was not eating pork at the time). And Ashkenazi women often have really nice titties. So anyway, men are attracted. And now my kids are 50% Ashkenazi**.

So if you want a group that you can say you can look to, before my kids' generation, to see a homogeneous group and it's influence, I can't imagine too many others better.

I was interested in hearing what people thought about the man's thesis. And instead I got blogs about a random sentence. I admit i had a few drinks in me, and I know I should not expect anything articulate from Ty. But sebby walked Ty's line and it troubled me.

*the neighborhoods were so fixed there is a game my wife and her friends call "Jewish geography." In the 80s, when we were young, we would be at an airport or train station and an older Jewish couple would sit by us and start a conversation. Eventually they'd ask where we were from. She would say "Philadelphia." They would ask, "what part?" The answer they expected was NorthEast- which meant you were a Jew. For Jewish geography to have been a thing, those neighborhoods had to be really solid Jewish. But like I said she grew up in a burb that was non-conclusive.

**I suppose the other 50% being whatever Atticus or Penske is?

Re: Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

By agency, I meant power, or right, to make the statement. I thought you way the fuck out of bounds. But i have an actual degree in science so did not have many courses in rhetoric. Sorry if I confused. You did not confuse, FWIW, instead you met my expectations.

Re: Je suis désolé, mais je ne te comprends pas.
 

Still don't understand what I said that is anywhere close to out of bounds, let alone way the fuck out of bounds. Like many, many other people, I think it was remarkably poor judgment on Bret Stephens' part to write a column about how Jews are smarter than everyone else, since it plays into anti-Semitic stereotypes. Not exactly sure why you find that controversial. Also, Stephens' idea that criticizing Israeli policy is a form of anti-Semitism is wrong and bad for everyone, not just the Jews. Again: Not a controversial idea on my part and something that you can find many Jews (like, for example, John Judis) saying.

Since you appear to be incapable of explaining what you're thinking about it in print, maybe it will have to wait until we can meet in person again.

Mi dispiace, ma non ti capisco.
 

Nothing you say above has anything to do with what you were saying last night. Last night, other than one random sentence, you were linking to stuff about his other writings maybe, I don't know.

You were out of bounds by the shit you said about me, not some random editorial writer. And "way the fuck out," yes.

But as now understood, you hypothesize a Jew should not raise the point that Jews win lots of Nobels, because bragging about Jewish success makes people dislike Jews even more? Thanks for that. Oh, question, since the NYT readers, and especially of the editorial page, are over-educated liberals, are you saying over-educated liberals are prone to disliking jews?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Don't go drawing too much from 23 and me. There are folks in my wife's family who test 100% Irish whose kids only test 40% Irish.

As to Stephen's view on the world, man, the dude just cited the white nationalist eugenicist right there in the article, it's not like he hid it. And the world's best known evolutionary biologist, among many, many others, spent a good part of the 90s debunking much of this stuff after Murray resurrected the old Nazi pseudo-sciences to argue that minorities in America were irredeemable and social programs were fighting nature.

This idea of racial supremacy, of whatever genetic group, just doesn't come from real science.

Re: Mi dispiace, ma non ti capisco.
 

Oops. I started to say Icelanders had the most nobel prizes per capita, but it's faroe islanders, followed by Santa Lucians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...tes_per_capita

Re: Mi dispiace, ma non ti capisco.
 

Obama is Kenyan. Where do Kenyans rank?

Re: Mi dispiace, ma non ti capisco.
 

Maybe you should stay off the board when you're drinking.

What did I say about you that was out of bounds?

What I said has nothing to do with whether Bret Stephens is Jewish. In fact, I didn't know that he was Jewish. And it's not about what he said making people dislike Jews -- you can say positive things about people and still play into stereotypes. Like, "blacks are athletic."

Re: Mi dispiace, ma non ti capisco.
 

No Mas. And understand this was a peace offering instead of calling you out.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Trump on the Embassy attacks: This is not going to be another Benghazi.”


What a complete Shit. I mean not the worst thing he has said, but somehow it just really hits. I have no idea if the bombings made sense. I have an Iraqi immigrant friend who hates the Iranian influence. But to reduce embassy attacks down to a possible political gain is just some vile shit.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Yes, it sucks, my biggest worry is not who takes political credit or blame for stuff going on but whether we can contain whatever war genies are being let out of their bottle.

Someone was commenting that Trump tries to do foreign policy without using either diplomacy or war, the two main tools for time immemorial, and that when that breaks down and he needs to pick up a tool on short notice to deal with an urgent situation the easier tool to grab quickly is always war.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Yeah, lots of them, but I assume you mean among "white" people in the west.

I'm always kind of blown away when smart people pay to give away their DNA. There's no way it's worth it.

Or pretends to. Also, that's not what those numbers actually mean.

Anyway, glad we're moving on from arguing about a column from someone whose writing one should actively avoid.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

The most closed genomes that are frequently studied in the west are Icelanders and Quebecois. Parts of Switzerland are also right up there. They all kept good records than the Ashkenazi, had very little exchange with other populations, and had their records burned and looted less often than the Ashkenazi did, so you can compare what you think you learn from genetics with actual genealogical records.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Well, I think I meant of peoples that I encounter. I think most of you had way deeper schooling is social sciences than I did. I took Thermodynamics IV instead of Sociology 400. That's why I was curious about what the guy was saying, not supporting it, or whoever he is- just wondering.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You might actually enjoy the Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's book responding to Murray. Don't read the whole thing, it gets repetitive, but the first hundred pages will give you his thinking and the basic history of racial pseudo-science.

Much of the discussion is more about what good scientific reasoning is, and how social science types screw it up by not understanding basic logical and scientific concepts. And how their screw ups then work their way into general discourse.

Gould wrote before the big breaks from sequencing the genome, someone needs to do an update with all the added data (which generally - surprise! surprise! - bore out what the real scientist was saying).

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Nothing that Stephens said is particularly new. See, e.g., this New York magazine article about a similar kerfuffle fifteen years ago, with more about the past of it. The reaction to his piece from most people was less about the specific content and more about Stephens' decision to write that column now, at a time when anti-Semitic attacks are coming more frequently. I take a familiarity with these ideas and the reactions to them as part of the landscape, perhaps not because I took sociology classes instead of thermodynamics (although I read Pynchon!), but rather because I grew up with a Jewish parent and siblings.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Maybe the big idea in that book, which is great, is that "intelligence" is not a single thing susceptible to measurement with a single metric, and that when scientists purport to measure "intelligence" they are measuring some subset of it that they particularly value for cultural reasons.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

TrifeKta!