But why do religious minorities overachieve? Is this just because there's a smaller population size so they have a higher deviation from the overall population mean? (are there just as many underachieving religious minorities?) Or do religious minorities tend to overachieve for some reason? Because that reason would be very interesting.
I think it's often been supposed that being part of religous minority makes you VERY self-concious of being different, that you see the world in a different way--and that can lead to a burst of creativity. It was also true of Christian minorities in England, such as Milton or Pope and Elgar (both Catholics). Also that being part of a religous minority often comes with tight social support/patronage networks.
Education (along with urbanization) may have something to do with it. At the start of the Industrial Revolution and when Britain was expanding its empire, Scotland had 4 ancient unis from the medieval period, a couple in its biggest cities while much more populous England had only 2 and they were in college towns, not London where the action is/was.
Noah’s style is to say something superficial and move on. I remember his tweets about women leaders being superior to men when it came to COVID control (a plausible hypothesis, but the evidence was crap). Only a D grade thinker promotes such thinking.
I have a theory. The major religions, excluding Jewry, place a human being (Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha) between themselves and the Creator. Jews don't do that.
As a result, what Jews believe in is infinite, unknowable and without limit. Pretty good traits to have back on Earth when trying to figure out things.
Perhaps Ashkenazi Jewish achievement has something to do with the Flynn effect. Because of European restrictions on where Jews could live and what they could do in Europe, Jewish people were confined to a few professions, mostly in cities and mostly involving symbolic manipulation. Therefore, Jewish communities in Europe developed as WEIRD people before others, and also saw their IQ's raised before other groups that were not living in cities dealing with abstraction and symbolic manipulation.
The other really convincing argument from above is that the first one: Ashkenazi Jewish emigration to the US, and also to Israel, was selective, sadly.
"I can easily see the same happening to Jews, especially given ultra-low Jewish fertility rates"
Pew did a study on american jews and they found a fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman aged 40-49, compared to 2.2 for US adults. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2013/10/jewish-american-full-report-for-web.pdf I would not describe that as "ultralow", probably similar to most of the OECD and well higher than east asia or southern europe, if you control for education/race its probably the same as americans as a whole. Israel has very high fertility rates, easily the highest in the world among advanced economies.
And it should be noted that Jews with Jewish spouses have a fertility rate of 2.8, the second highest of the religious/ethnic groups measured by PEW. In fact, Tacitus was complaining about high Jewish birthrates when he wrote.
I would also say that in America, among other high-skilled immigrant groups, Jews could pass most easily for White. In Europe, where culture wasn't defined as White vs. Black, that meant that Jews were looked on as "chameleons" who deceptively blended in. But in America, where culture IS defined primarily as White vs. Black, being a Jew in many ways was like being "Class 1b", instead of second-class.
you were successful JEWS, because God chose Abraham-Isaac-Jacob to begin his process to build a theocracy on earth, the nation of Israel, which finally gave birth to Jesus Christ, which resulted in Finishing the Atonement (Crucifixion)(33ad) and the beginning of building the Spiritual Kingdom Of God, which is now reaching its End-Point of (2033) when Jesus Christ (Returns)
You Jew NEVER understood (33ad) neither did you understand (70ad) nor do you understand (1948) your reconstituted state of (Israel) ONLY exists to fullfil the Prophecy of Jesus Christ: who spoke of the "FigTree" being in "leaf" signifying this event: the re-birth, the "born-again" state of Israel is a great historical marker-stone signifying (1948) is the "birth" of the Very Last and Final Generation of human existence
you Jews are just as Haughty, and Stiff-Necked, as Jehovah God described the "Apple of His Eye"
you think (stupidly and falsely) you are "still somehow, right with God"
when God Rejected His Heritage in 70ad just as general Titus declared
you are "earthly" and only care about your nation/state of Israel
the "god" you Jews worship?
are (yourselves)
"the special Jews, the particular people, who trace our bloodline heritage back to Abraham-Isaac, Jacob" and the Old Testament (your re-written Tanakh) and your "own traditions" (your Talmud)
you are a pompous, proudful, "Jew and stupid Goyim" haughty people
smugness, Leftist In Political orientation
and You Noah Smith who favor
China and its Communism>Capitalism
over The United States
and of Course, Leftist Jew
sho HATES Donald Trump
who thinks Chinese Nationalism And its Empire Phase Is Wonderous
Because like your fellow
Marxist Jew Robert Wolf
thinks American Nationalism
is Fascism this is because Jew:
you HATE the (White Race)
and perfectly agree that
(Deconstructing Whiteness)
must occur because, according to Blacks and the Jews, who are the construction Artists of (Deconstructing Whiteness):
you were successful JEWS, because God chose Abraham-Isaac-Jacob to begin his process to build a theocracy on earth, the nation of Israel, which finally gave birth to Jesus Christ, which resulted in Finishing the Atonement (Crucifixion)(33ad) and the beginning of building the Spiritual Kingdom Of God, which is now reaching its End-Point of (2033) when Jesus Christ (Returns)
You Jew NEVER understood (33ad) neither did you understand (70ad) nor do you understand (1948) your reconstituted state of (Israel) ONLY exists to fullfil the Prophecy of Jesus Christ: who spoke of the "FigTree" being in "leaf" signifying this event: the re-birth, the "born-again" state of Israel is a great historical marker-stone signifying (1948) is the "birth" of the Very Last and Final Generation of human existence
you Jews are just as Haughty, and Stiff-Necked, as Jehovah God described the "Apple of His Eye"
you think (stupidly and falsely) you are "still somehow, right with God"
when God Rejected His Heritage in 70ad just as general Titus declared
you are "earthly" and only care about your nation/state of Israel
the "god" you Jews worship?
are (yourselves)
"the special Jews, the particular people, who trace our bloodline heritage back to Abraham-Isaac, Jacob" and the Old Testament (your re-written Tanakh) and your "own traditions" (your Talmud)
you are a pompous, proudful, "Jew and stupid Goyim" haughty people
smugness, Leftist In Political orientation
and You Noah Smith who favor
China and its Communism>Capitalism
over The United States
and of Course, Leftist Jew
sho HATES Donald Trump
who thinks Chinese Nationalism And its Empire Phase Is Wonderous
Because like your fellow
Marxist Jew Robert Wolf
thinks American Nationalism
is Fascism this is because Jew:
you HATE the (White Race)
and perfectly agree that
(Deconstructing Whiteness)
must occur because, according to Blacks and the Jews, who are the construction Artists of (Deconstructing Whiteness):
I suspect selective immigration is a major driver. It seems that ethnicities that were the most selected have done the best. Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos are caught in one of the quirks of the US immigration law, and unlike most nationalities recent cohorts have been restricted to the best-educated occupations. (I note that before 1965, before the current law, Chinese immigrants weren't seen as particularly intelligent.) Conversely, Native Americans didn't immigrate and weren't selected at all. American Blacks weren't voluntary immigrants, and given that they were actively captured and sold by African polities, chances are that they were negatively selected from the source populations. Jews are likely a more complicated case; most American Jews come from Ashkenazi populations, and Sephardim and Mizrahim are underrepresented. But Ashkenazim seem to have unusually benefited from the mosaic of which occupations they were and weren't allowed to practice in Medieval Europe.
A common idea is that a group concept of the group's innate superiority combined with a sense of group vulnerability tends to focus members' efforts on doing well.
Wondering if you ever read or reacted to Scott Alexander’s piece on this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/
I kind of think everyone in Hungary actually has Jewish ancestry.
Soooo... no?
No, but I skimmed it and it was all stuff I knew and had thought about.
Noah’s ideas are a strict superset of Scott’s 😂
A more sensible world would have rewarded Scott much more than a D grade thinker like Noah.
It was a four-part series and you skimmed part 1?
But why do religious minorities overachieve? Is this just because there's a smaller population size so they have a higher deviation from the overall population mean? (are there just as many underachieving religious minorities?) Or do religious minorities tend to overachieve for some reason? Because that reason would be very interesting.
I think it's often been supposed that being part of religous minority makes you VERY self-concious of being different, that you see the world in a different way--and that can lead to a burst of creativity. It was also true of Christian minorities in England, such as Milton or Pope and Elgar (both Catholics). Also that being part of a religous minority often comes with tight social support/patronage networks.
These are the kind of posts I subscribe to you for (even if I initially thought I was subscribing to a Late Nite Noah substack). 😓😓😓
Education (along with urbanization) may have something to do with it. At the start of the Industrial Revolution and when Britain was expanding its empire, Scotland had 4 ancient unis from the medieval period, a couple in its biggest cities while much more populous England had only 2 and they were in college towns, not London where the action is/was.
Makes you think.
Did you see this direct rebuttal to your post from Scott Alexander? "Contra Smith on Jewish Selective Immigration": https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-smith-on-jewish-selective
Noah’s style is to say something superficial and move on. I remember his tweets about women leaders being superior to men when it came to COVID control (a plausible hypothesis, but the evidence was crap). Only a D grade thinker promotes such thinking.
I have a theory. The major religions, excluding Jewry, place a human being (Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha) between themselves and the Creator. Jews don't do that.
As a result, what Jews believe in is infinite, unknowable and without limit. Pretty good traits to have back on Earth when trying to figure out things.
Perhaps Ashkenazi Jewish achievement has something to do with the Flynn effect. Because of European restrictions on where Jews could live and what they could do in Europe, Jewish people were confined to a few professions, mostly in cities and mostly involving symbolic manipulation. Therefore, Jewish communities in Europe developed as WEIRD people before others, and also saw their IQ's raised before other groups that were not living in cities dealing with abstraction and symbolic manipulation.
The other really convincing argument from above is that the first one: Ashkenazi Jewish emigration to the US, and also to Israel, was selective, sadly.
"I can easily see the same happening to Jews, especially given ultra-low Jewish fertility rates"
Pew did a study on american jews and they found a fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman aged 40-49, compared to 2.2 for US adults. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2013/10/jewish-american-full-report-for-web.pdf I would not describe that as "ultralow", probably similar to most of the OECD and well higher than east asia or southern europe, if you control for education/race its probably the same as americans as a whole. Israel has very high fertility rates, easily the highest in the world among advanced economies.
And it should be noted that Jews with Jewish spouses have a fertility rate of 2.8, the second highest of the religious/ethnic groups measured by PEW. In fact, Tacitus was complaining about high Jewish birthrates when he wrote.
I would also say that in America, among other high-skilled immigrant groups, Jews could pass most easily for White. In Europe, where culture wasn't defined as White vs. Black, that meant that Jews were looked on as "chameleons" who deceptively blended in. But in America, where culture IS defined primarily as White vs. Black, being a Jew in many ways was like being "Class 1b", instead of second-class.
This might be more accurate at this time in America, but Jews stuck out like a sore thumb and were excluded throughout history- for sake of ease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_United_States
You’re right; I imagine it’s one of those things that progressively buoys their fortunes relative to other minorities as time goes on.
Posting this is like saying "beetlejuice" three times, but for Steve Sailer.
Oh no
you were successful JEWS, because God chose Abraham-Isaac-Jacob to begin his process to build a theocracy on earth, the nation of Israel, which finally gave birth to Jesus Christ, which resulted in Finishing the Atonement (Crucifixion)(33ad) and the beginning of building the Spiritual Kingdom Of God, which is now reaching its End-Point of (2033) when Jesus Christ (Returns)
You Jew NEVER understood (33ad) neither did you understand (70ad) nor do you understand (1948) your reconstituted state of (Israel) ONLY exists to fullfil the Prophecy of Jesus Christ: who spoke of the "FigTree" being in "leaf" signifying this event: the re-birth, the "born-again" state of Israel is a great historical marker-stone signifying (1948) is the "birth" of the Very Last and Final Generation of human existence
you Jews are just as Haughty, and Stiff-Necked, as Jehovah God described the "Apple of His Eye"
you think (stupidly and falsely) you are "still somehow, right with God"
when God Rejected His Heritage in 70ad just as general Titus declared
you are "earthly" and only care about your nation/state of Israel
the "god" you Jews worship?
are (yourselves)
"the special Jews, the particular people, who trace our bloodline heritage back to Abraham-Isaac, Jacob" and the Old Testament (your re-written Tanakh) and your "own traditions" (your Talmud)
you are a pompous, proudful, "Jew and stupid Goyim" haughty people
smugness, Leftist In Political orientation
and You Noah Smith who favor
China and its Communism>Capitalism
over The United States
and of Course, Leftist Jew
sho HATES Donald Trump
who thinks Chinese Nationalism And its Empire Phase Is Wonderous
Because like your fellow
Marxist Jew Robert Wolf
thinks American Nationalism
is Fascism this is because Jew:
you HATE the (White Race)
and perfectly agree that
(Deconstructing Whiteness)
must occur because, according to Blacks and the Jews, who are the construction Artists of (Deconstructing Whiteness):
("Whiteness Is Evil")
("Whiteness Is Evil")
you were successful JEWS, because God chose Abraham-Isaac-Jacob to begin his process to build a theocracy on earth, the nation of Israel, which finally gave birth to Jesus Christ, which resulted in Finishing the Atonement (Crucifixion)(33ad) and the beginning of building the Spiritual Kingdom Of God, which is now reaching its End-Point of (2033) when Jesus Christ (Returns)
You Jew NEVER understood (33ad) neither did you understand (70ad) nor do you understand (1948) your reconstituted state of (Israel) ONLY exists to fullfil the Prophecy of Jesus Christ: who spoke of the "FigTree" being in "leaf" signifying this event: the re-birth, the "born-again" state of Israel is a great historical marker-stone signifying (1948) is the "birth" of the Very Last and Final Generation of human existence
you Jews are just as Haughty, and Stiff-Necked, as Jehovah God described the "Apple of His Eye"
you think (stupidly and falsely) you are "still somehow, right with God"
when God Rejected His Heritage in 70ad just as general Titus declared
you are "earthly" and only care about your nation/state of Israel
the "god" you Jews worship?
are (yourselves)
"the special Jews, the particular people, who trace our bloodline heritage back to Abraham-Isaac, Jacob" and the Old Testament (your re-written Tanakh) and your "own traditions" (your Talmud)
you are a pompous, proudful, "Jew and stupid Goyim" haughty people
smugness, Leftist In Political orientation
and You Noah Smith who favor
China and its Communism>Capitalism
over The United States
and of Course, Leftist Jew
sho HATES Donald Trump
who thinks Chinese Nationalism And its Empire Phase Is Wonderous
Because like your fellow
Marxist Jew Robert Wolf
thinks American Nationalism
is Fascism this is because Jew:
you HATE the (White Race)
and perfectly agree that
(Deconstructing Whiteness)
must occur because, according to Blacks and the Jews, who are the construction Artists of (Deconstructing Whiteness):
("Whiteness Is Evil")
("Whiteness Is Evil")
I suspect selective immigration is a major driver. It seems that ethnicities that were the most selected have done the best. Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos are caught in one of the quirks of the US immigration law, and unlike most nationalities recent cohorts have been restricted to the best-educated occupations. (I note that before 1965, before the current law, Chinese immigrants weren't seen as particularly intelligent.) Conversely, Native Americans didn't immigrate and weren't selected at all. American Blacks weren't voluntary immigrants, and given that they were actively captured and sold by African polities, chances are that they were negatively selected from the source populations. Jews are likely a more complicated case; most American Jews come from Ashkenazi populations, and Sephardim and Mizrahim are underrepresented. But Ashkenazim seem to have unusually benefited from the mosaic of which occupations they were and weren't allowed to practice in Medieval Europe.
A common idea is that a group concept of the group's innate superiority combined with a sense of group vulnerability tends to focus members' efforts on doing well.
https://twitter.com/jonathan_amit/status/1507432714072375299