Current Events > Ah cool so the NYT is just openly publishing race science again

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/jewish-culture-genius-iq.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion

Good ol' Bret Stephens

An eminent Lithuanian rabbi is annoyed that his yeshiva students devote their lunch breaks to playing soccer instead of discussing Torah. The students, intent on convincing their rav of the games beauty, invite him to watch a professional match. At halftime, they ask what he thinks.

I have solved your problem, the rabbi says.

How?

Give one ball to each side, and they will have nothing to fight over.

I have this (apocryphal) anecdote from Norman Lebrechts new book, Genius & Anxiety, an erudite and delightful study of the intellectual achievements and nerve-wracked lives of Jewish thinkers, artists, and entrepreneurs between 1847 and 1947. Sarah Bernhardt and Franz Kafka; Albert Einstein and Rosalind Franklin; Benjamin Disraeli and (sigh) Karl Marx how is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the worlds population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?

The common answer is that Jews are, or tend to be, smart. When it comes to Ashkenazi Jews, its true. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average I.Q. of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data, noted one 2005 paper. During the 20th century, they made up about 3 percent of the U.S. population but won 27 percent of the U.S. Nobel science prizes and 25 percent of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.

But the Jews are smart explanation obscures more than it illuminates. Aside from the perennial nature-or-nurture question of why so many Ashkenazi Jews have higher I.Q.s, there is the more difficult question of why that intelligence was so often matched by such bracing originality and high-minded purpose. One can apply a prodigious intellect in the service of prosaic things formulating a war plan, for instance, or constructing a ship. One can also apply brilliance in the service of a mistake or a crime, like managing a planned economy or robbing a bank.

But as the story of the Lithuanian rabbi suggests, Jewish genius operates differently. It is prone to question the premise and rethink the concept; to ask why (or why not?) as often as how; to see the absurd in the mundane and the sublime in the absurd. Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different.

Where do these habits of mind come from?

There is a religious tradition that, unlike some others, asks the believer not only to observe and obey but also to discuss and disagree. There is the never-quite-comfortable status of Jews in places where they are the minority intimately familiar with the customs of the country while maintaining a critical distance from them. There is a moral belief, incarnate in the Jewish people according to Einstein, that the life of the individual only has value [insofar] as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful.

And there is the understanding, born of repeated exile, that everything that seems solid and valuable is ultimately perishable, while everything that is intangible knowledge most of all is potentially everlasting.

We had been well off, but that was all we got out, the late financier Felix Rohatyn recalled of his narrow escape, with a few hidden gold coins, from the Nazis as a child in World War II. Ever since, Ive had the feeling that the only permanent wealth is what you carry around in your head. If the greatest Jewish minds seem to have no walls, it may be because, for Jews, the walls have so often come tumbling down.

The "2005 paper" he cites is this one, "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence"
https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

Which was co-authored by a known White Nationalist and Eugenicist

Reminder the NYT decided they no longer needed to have a person in the position that would have been responsible for reading this article and saying "What the fuck is this we're not publishing this"
---

---

ITT: antisemitism disguised as anti-racism

whoops! https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1211378700069023744
---

Really hope NYT realizes Bret Stephens is more trouble than he's worth

Bio1590 posted...

and (sigh) Karl Marx

lol I wonder what was this supposed to mean

---

Sec0ndAmendment posted...

ITT: antisemitism disguised as anti-racism

User Since: Jun 2010
Karma: 32

---

bedbug

---

It's real easy to see this article isn't about which race is smarter. It's explaining the statistically high amount of Jewish genius via culture, rather than genetics. I doubt tc actually bothered reading what he even posted, or maybe he's just mad that Jews are being touted positively at all.

Sec0ndAmendment posted...

ITT: antisemitism disguised as anti-racism

---

ThanksUglyGod posted...

Really hope NYT realizes Bret Stephens is more trouble than he's worth

If they haven't yet they're never going to
---

Bretbug infests another article

---