Watson in Esquire
I’ve received several emails about this interview by James Watson in Esquire. Here is a representative sample:
I’ve wondered why people aren’t more intelligent. Why isn’t everyone as intelligent as Ashkenazi Jews? And it may be societies work best when there’s a mixture of abilities-the bright people would never be an army. Or has our intelligence been limited by leaders killing off any potential competitors? I suspect time is not a factor. The Ashkenazi Jews have a thousand years. So these are the sorts of things we’ll find out-how many mutations would you need to be more intelligent?
“For all my life, America was the place to be.”
Except when he made his big discovery, of course.
Pretty interesting how gnxp-y he is. Interest in genetics seems to lead to a common worldview and way of thinking.
how many mutations would you need to be more intelligent?
Good question. Do you think, inbreeding is an important factor? (Together with selection of son-in-laws mostly by performance in schools?)
Jewish men are encouraged, in the torah and the talmud, to marry their nieces.
Ashkenazi Jews also tend to be neurotic which may mean that there is a connection between IQ and neurosis. The costs of neurosis may place limitations on IQ in most populations.
So, you mean, non-jews are not so much prepared to encounter a social problem like “neurosis”???
A very good idea. For example in families, isn’t it? Non-jews are TOO stupid concerning this. Always they want to have “all or nothing”. And then you have divorce.
Or, may be: Often they do not have enough religion/metaphysics to encounter neurosis.
Regular people of average IQ might be necessary mediators between smart folk. High IQ nerds tend to be too stuck in their subjects of interest and oblivious to function as a society. They also don’t necessarily like each other, since high-order ideas tend to be incompatible.
The world needs people to generate useful ideas, but probably needs other types to carry them out. Even bin Laden (who I’m sure is no stupidian) has his grunts to get shot or blown up for “The Cause.”
Aspie alert! Methinks, anyway.
I read Watson’s comments and I think, “Why on earth would anyone be more intelligent than they are, let alone as smart as Ashkenazis?”
And then I think, “Why on earth would anyone spend time wondering why people aren’t more intelligent than they are?”
And then I think “Aspie alert.”
Re: higher Neuroticism, there’s no correlation b/w Neuroticism & IQ at the individual level. So if we see a high-N high-IQ pop, that’s probably related to selection pressures for the personality skills involved in occupying a managerial niche. Higher Neuroticism means your emotional alarm is set off by lower-level threats, which presumably is more necessary in money lending than in H-G societies.
I agree, I don’t think neuroticism can be explained as a consequence of high IQ. I think ashkenazi neuroticism is probably due to selection on personality types. What kind of OCD, anxious person would cling to the same religous community despite all the adversity it brings, instead of peeling off, and joining the rest of the world. Didn’t Judaism lose a lot of people to conversion?
also, with pogroms and so forth, anxiety would be beneficial, leave before things get bad.
Also, am I the only person who noticed some faulty-logic group selection statement in his interview?
What kind of OCD, anxious person would cling to the same religous community despite all the adversity it brings, instead of peeling off, and joining the rest of the world. Didn’t Judaism lose a lot of people to conversion?
1) lots lost to conversion (minimal per generation introgression, though non-trivial over the long term)
2) i think the ingroup vs. outgroup issue might be less relevant than the fact that european jews were urbanites for so long. before 100 years ago the vast majority of humans were peasants. not european jews