Shrunk wrote:[
Since I'm also not a scientist, I guess I haven't earned the privilege of conversing with you, so I hope you'll excuse my impertinence. However, your reply also implies that the term "junk DNA" is based on a presumption, and there is no way of determining whether any particular fragment of a genome that does not code for a protein has no other function. So all that can be said is of such a fragment is that, as of yet, it has no known function. Whether or not that is what you believe, it is a common enough misconception that it deserves correction.

Below are a few blogposts from someone who is a scientist and has expertise in this area:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/ju ... lines.html

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/ju ... sines.html

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/th ... k-dna.html

As you can see, for most of the human genome there is positive evidence that it serves no function and can justifiably be called "junk". At the absolute least this comprises 55%. That still leaves a portion of the genome that may have functions yet to be discovered. But at this point there is no reason to believe that even as much as 10% of the genome serves a function.

Well, Shrunk, what a relief! For once you have found something (which is very interesting, btw) that doesn't contradict me!
What Sandwalk wrote is what was known about the Genome 3-4 years ago, when sequencing of the whole human genome was horribly expensive. Nowadays, you can have your Genome sequenced for only a few thou.
So, IMO, the role of every piece of DNA will be unveiled in a few years.

Mr.Samsa wrote:I've skipped a few pages but does anyone have any actual evidence that Jewish people have a higher intelligence than other groups? I can only find a couple of large studies that have attempted to answer this question and most estimated the IQ of Jewish people at around 100 - with the largest outlier being 103. This is entirely unremarkable, as you can find entire countries (comprised of multicultural influences and huge genetic diversity) with higher averages than that.

Samsa,
I will answer your question by reproducing some posts I have written previously in this thread:

Mr. Sarrazin is convinced Jews are more intelligent then other ethnic groups. It is possible but hardly scientifically established. To do that, you would have to evaluate (with the IQ?) the intelligence of lets say 100 Jews, 100 Arabs, 100 Caucasians, 100 Chinese (Han?) and so on so forth, and look for statistically significant differences: An impossible task.

Father Joe has indeed tallied the Nobel prizes won by Jews and by Arabs and -- of course -- found a huge difference (8 Arabs in 1,200,000,000, and 128 Jews in 14,000,000). But, what does that mean? Possibly only that, traditionally, the Jews put a prime on education.
It could be interesting to compare Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews. But, again, human intelligence is very hard to define and, like a diamond, it has many facets.

That's what Steve Sailer says in his blog:
"The historical record shows the Jews in Islamic countries periodically getting kicked out of the good jobs in finance and being sent off to be tanners or other jobs where there's not as much upside for high IQ individuals. That's not true for Northern Europe, where Jewish occupations were consistently upscale until the great Ashkenazi population surge of the last few centuries.
No doubt the Middle Eastern Jews were often smarter than the local Arabs, but that's not necessarily the same as being smarter than the local Germans. With Arab IQs today typically running in the 80s, you don't have to be an Einstein to be brighter than them.
Nor is it clear that Middle Eastern Jews were consistently the brightest minority in their region, as you would see in Europe. I believe Evelyn Waugh reported an old saying he picked up while traveling in the Near East that went something like this: It takes two Arabs to outsmart a Greek, two Greeks to outsmart a Jew, and two Jews to outsmart an Armenian. (Waugh was a big fan of Armenians.)"

In any case, I still think this is a very sensitive ground.

Federico wrote: Well, Shrunk, what a relief! For once you have found something (which is very interesting, btw) that doesn't contradict me!
What Sandwalk wrote is what was known about the Genome 3-4 years ago, when sequencing of the whole human genome was horribly expensive. Nowadays, you can have your Genome sequenced for only a few thou.
So, IMO, the role of every piece of DNA will be unveiled in a few years.

Your post remains open to misinterpretation, or at least multiple contradictory interpretations.

Are you claiming that "every piece of DNA" has a "role," and that none of it is purposeless "junk" that is simply a vestige of our ancestral past?

Federico wrote:
Father Joe has indeed tallied the Nobel prizes won by Jews and by Arabs and -- of course -- found a huge difference (8 Arabs in 1,200,000,000, and 128 Jews in 14,000,000). But, what does that mean? Possibly only that, traditionally, the Jews put a prime on education.

Small factual errors keep creeping in all the time in the posts made by those who advocate a significant genetic effect here. There aren't 1,200,000,000 Arabs. The Arab ethnicities have a combined population of about 300,000,000.

When there's a constant trickle of mistakes like this, one tends to get suspicious of the main claims.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Federico wrote:
Father Joe has indeed tallied the Nobel prizes won by Jews and by Arabs and -- of course -- found a huge difference (8 Arabs in 1,200,000,000, and 128 Jews in 14,000,000). But, what does that mean? Possibly only that, traditionally, the Jews put a prime on education.

Small factual errors keep creeping in all the time in the posts made by those who advocate a significant genetic effect here. There aren't 1,200,000,000 Arabs. The Arab ethnicities have a combined population of about 300,000,000.

When there's a constant trickle of mistakes like this, one tends to get suspicious of the main claims.

Especially when the "trickle of mistakes" occurs in the context of outright hate propaganda like this:

Steve Sailer wrote:No doubt the Middle Eastern Jews were often smarter than the local Arabs, but that's not necessarily the same as being smarter than the local Germans. With Arab IQs today typically running in the 80s, you don't have to be an Einstein to be brighter than them.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Federico wrote:
Father Joe has indeed tallied the Nobel prizes won by Jews and by Arabs and -- of course -- found a huge difference (8 Arabs in 1,200,000,000, and 128 Jews in 14,000,000). But, what does that mean? Possibly only that, traditionally, the Jews put a prime on education.

Small factual errors keep creeping in all the time in the posts made by those who advocate a significant genetic effect here. There aren't 1,200,000,000 Arabs. The Arab ethnicities have a combined population of about 300,000,000.

When there's a constant trickle of mistakes like this, one tends to get suspicious of the main claims.

Sorry, it's not a factual error by a semantics' mistake on my part which nobody picked up until you did: My compliments.

"NOBEL PRIZES, JEWS & MUSLIMS, FOR THE RECORD
September 3, 2006 by Father Joe
For the record. . .

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population."

Shrunk wrote:

Federico wrote: Well, Shrunk, what a relief! For once you have found something (which is very interesting, btw) that doesn't contradict me!
What Sandwalk wrote is what was known about the Genome 3-4 years ago, when sequencing of the whole human genome was horribly expensive. Nowadays, you can have your Genome sequenced for only a few thou.
So, IMO, the role of every piece of DNA will be unveiled in a few years.

Your post remains open to misinterpretation, or at least multiple contradictory interpretations.

Are you claiming that "every piece of DNA" has a "role," and that none of it is purposeless "junk" that is simply a vestige of our ancestral past?

Quien sabe? Not for the moment at least.

Federico wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Federico wrote:
Father Joe has indeed tallied the Nobel prizes won by Jews and by Arabs and -- of course -- found a huge difference (8 Arabs in 1,200,000,000, and 128 Jews in 14,000,000). But, what does that mean? Possibly only that, traditionally, the Jews put a prime on education.

Small factual errors keep creeping in all the time in the posts made by those who advocate a significant genetic effect here. There aren't 1,200,000,000 Arabs. The Arab ethnicities have a combined population of about 300,000,000.

When there's a constant trickle of mistakes like this, one tends to get suspicious of the main claims.

Sorry, it's not a factual error by a semantics' mistake on my part which nobody picked up until you did: My compliments.

"NOBEL PRIZES, JEWS & MUSLIMS, FOR THE RECORD
September 3, 2006 by Father Joe
For the record. . .

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population."

I knew it probably was Muslims you were referring to, but confusing Muslims and Arabs is such an obvious thing that you should learn not to do it. And the fact that there's a constant trickle, as I said, of this kind of mistake, is kind of suspicious wrt how well you actually know your stuff and how good your sources are.

Federico wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

Federico wrote: Well, Shrunk, what a relief! For once you have found something (which is very interesting, btw) that doesn't contradict me!
What Sandwalk wrote is what was known about the Genome 3-4 years ago, when sequencing of the whole human genome was horribly expensive. Nowadays, you can have your Genome sequenced for only a few thou.
So, IMO, the role of every piece of DNA will be unveiled in a few years.

Your post remains open to misinterpretation, or at least multiple contradictory interpretations.

Are you claiming that "every piece of DNA" has a "role," and that none of it is purposeless "junk" that is simply a vestige of our ancestral past?

Quien sabe? Not for the moment at least.

Well, for the moment we know that at least 55% of the human genome is certainly functionless "junk". About 5% serves a function. That leaves onlly about 40% for which we can say "Quien sabe?"

Federico wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I've skipped a few pages but does anyone have any actual evidence that Jewish people have a higher intelligence than other groups? I can only find a couple of large studies that have attempted to answer this question and most estimated the IQ of Jewish people at around 100 - with the largest outlier being 103. This is entirely unremarkable, as you can find entire countries (comprised of multicultural influences and huge genetic diversity) with higher averages than that.

Samsa,
I will answer your question by reproducing some posts I have written previously in this thread:

Mr. Sarrazin is convinced Jews are more intelligent then other ethnic groups. It is possible but hardly scientifically established. To do that, you would have to evaluate (with the IQ?) the intelligence of lets say 100 Jews, 100 Arabs, 100 Caucasians, 100 Chinese (Han?) and so on so forth, and look for statistically significant differences: An impossible task.

Father Joe has indeed tallied the Nobel prizes won by Jews and by Arabs and -- of course -- found a huge difference (8 Arabs in 1,200,000,000, and 128 Jews in 14,000,000). But, what does that mean? Possibly only that, traditionally, the Jews put a prime on education.
It could be interesting to compare Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews. But, again, human intelligence is very hard to define and, like a diamond, it has many facets.

That's what Steve Sailer says in his blog:
"The historical record shows the Jews in Islamic countries periodically getting kicked out of the good jobs in finance and being sent off to be tanners or other jobs where there's not as much upside for high IQ individuals. That's not true for Northern Europe, where Jewish occupations were consistently upscale until the great Ashkenazi population surge of the last few centuries.
No doubt the Middle Eastern Jews were often smarter than the local Arabs, but that's not necessarily the same as being smarter than the local Germans. With Arab IQs today typically running in the 80s, you don't have to be an Einstein to be brighter than them.
Nor is it clear that Middle Eastern Jews were consistently the brightest minority in their region, as you would see in Europe. I believe Evelyn Waugh reported an old saying he picked up while traveling in the Near East that went something like this: It takes two Arabs to outsmart a Greek, two Greeks to outsmart a Jew, and two Jews to outsmart an Armenian. (Waugh was a big fan of Armenians.)"

In any case, I still think this is a very sensitive ground.

I saw that quote earlier, so in other words: There is absolutely no evidence that Jewish people have higher IQs? I thought so. The Nobel prize comment is completely irrelevant, I don't understand why he included that, it has nothing to do with intelligence.

The first bit is hilarious though - we'd need 100 people from each ethnic group to determine significant difference and this is an "impossible task"?

How about we get over 1000 Jewish people and see if their IQ is any different from others? "Patterns of mental abilities: ethnic, socioeconomic and sex differences" - nope, no difference. The only difference in IQ was a result of different social economic status, which explains why Jewish people are often viewed as more intelligent and blacks least intelligent. It's a function of their poverty, not their "natural" intelligence.

Shrunk wrote:

tribalypredisposed wrote: Yep to this part of your post. And here is the deal - if we assert that the answer to your question is no, then unavoidably we are claiming that human intelligence was not the product of positive evolutionary selection but instead is simply the result of genetic drift or is a "spandrel." Make this claim explicitly and every single evolutionary biologist, evolutionary psychologist, physical anthropologist, and primatologist will laugh in your face.

I'm just skimming this thread to get caught up, but this caught my eye.

Is this claim really as laughable as it seems? Could it not be argued that the aspects of "intelligence" we are discussing in this thread actually did arise as spandrels? In order to refute that claim, would we not have to demonstrate the selective advantages, in our evolutionary past, of the ability to perform advanced calculus or compose piano sonatas?

Good question. In general it is assumed that larger brain = more intelligence, although most humans and academics forget this assumption when looking at species with larger brains than ours. The second assumption generally made is that there must be a fitness benefit for having a large brain/intelligence because brains are very demanding in terms of caloric consumption; our brains use a disproportionate amount of the calories we consume. Given that our brains are not simply scaled up for our size when compared to other primates, but are instead several times the expected given our body size, and that having such large brains is costly in terms of calories, positive selection for intelligence is the only reasonable assumption to make. Now, of course this is science and nothing is ever proven. But given the available evidence this is the scientific consensus right now, and I know of no serious challenges to it.

Now, what adaptive purpose our ability to do math was associated with is unknown, and that specific talent may well be a "spandrel" of some other selection for intelligence or creativity of some kind. No one can tell you at this point. But the overall point that intelligence can be selected for by evolution and seems to have been in the case of humans is not in dispute amongst academics to my knowledge. If intelligence was subject to evolutionary selection then it must be possible for new mutations to arise which affect intelligence and to be selected for, and these would not pass from group to group by infections but would remain specific to the group they arose in, if as in the case of the Jews there was little transmission of genes to or from other groups.

Let me just respond briefly to Agrippina. Sociology is as close to science as Astrology is. Your posts attempt to refute logical argumentation with a simple "argument by authority," with the claimed authority being Max Weber who is long dead, died in fact over three decades before we even discoverd DNA, and who was wrong about basically everything. This is not a productive contribution to the discussion. I do not care if you believe in god or not, your thinking on this is very clearly faith-based.

And as a further general point, I am getting still further annoyed by the constant habit of posters here of changing the terms used to construct straw-men. No one here is claiming "superior" or that Jews are a "race." The question is and was "different," and there has been empirical evidence provided that supports the assertion that there are some differences. There has also been a logical argument made that the Theory of Evolution requires that we not rule out the possible existence of such differences and that Jews are exactly the type of group which is most likely to evidence a DNA-based difference from other groups due to their genetic homogeneity.

If someone wants to dispute the empirical evidence, I am all ears. If someone wants to claim that the Theory of Evolution is wrong or that evolution could not/did not select for intelligence in humans, again I am happy to entertain that. If the several posters who have so far "contributed" ignorant faith-based assertions want to continue to spew their political opinions, I cannot stop them but let me observe that there truly is no point. We get it; you have a view you have committed to and no matter how wrong it is or how indefensible it is scientifically or logically you will continue to assert this view. Noted, now please wander off into traffic. Thanks.

tribalypredisposed said: Let me just respond briefly to Agrippina. Sociology is as close to science as Astrology is. Your posts attempt to refute logical argumentation with a simple "argument by authority," with the claimed authority being Max Weber who is long dead, died in fact over three decades before we even discoverd DNA, and who was wrong about basically everything.

Funny how sociologists are the people that governments consult when they want to figure out how to deal with social issues, how strange that they should do that. And that sociology is the required field of study for people who want to work in the management of people within society, now how does that relate to astrology, please get you metaphors correct.Also I didn't quote any specific sociologists, I merely pointed out that from a sociological point of view, making people "different" only gives other people the opportunity to abuse them.

This is not a productive contribution to the discussion. I do not care if you believe in god or not, your thinking on this is very clearly faith-based.

Really, not productive, and I suppose citing personal experience is?

On the faith-based thing.

I actually get what it's about. It's my claim that Jews, and other people, regard themselves as different because of their religion. I can also see why secular Jews would want to deny this and claim that it's either cultural or genetic. To a degree I agree. Being Jewish does not necessarily imply that you also adhere to the religion, or even that you pay lip service to some aspects of the religion, and are therefore culturally only jewish, or Jewish because of your familial connections, i.e. genes.

My argument is simply this. Originally Jews came about because of their belief, or the tradition that was handed down that they were the chosen of a particular God and they formulated their religion around that belief. Because they appeared to be monotheistic, it set them aside from other people and caused them, in their religion and what became culture to become genetically similar. So that today, all of us with Jewish ancestry have something of those people in us, genetically. I get it, but I disagree that it is the genetics that makes people who are Jewish 'special' in any way other than that they can claim an ancestry from the people who first formulated the religion, then the culture resulting in the genetic markers that sometimes appear in people who don't even know that they have them. I don't really want to argue about this anymore, it is clear that there is some effort being made to prove that those genes somehow are responsible for odd members of the descendants of the original Hebrews to be able to do maths, or whatever.

tribalypredisposed wrote:Good question. In general it is assumed that larger brain = more intelligence, although most humans and academics forget this assumption when looking at species with larger brains than ours.

No scientist assumes that larger brain = intelligence. The closest to that kind of claim would be the idea that there is a vague correlation between the encephalisation quotient (brain-to-body-mass ratio) and intelligence, but the correlation isn't very strong at all and it seems as if intelligence is a result of another confounding factor which is itself correlated with size; namely, neural organisation.

tribalypredisposed wrote:The second assumption generally made is that there must be a fitness benefit for having a large brain/intelligence because brains are very demanding in terms of caloric consumption; our brains use a disproportionate amount of the calories we consume. Given that our brains are not simply scaled up for our size when compared to other primates, but are instead several times the expected given our body size, and that having such large brains is costly in terms of calories, positive selection for intelligence is the only reasonable assumption to make. Now, of course this is science and nothing is ever proven. But given the available evidence this is the scientific consensus right now, and I know of no serious challenges to it.

If we accept this argument then we have only demonstrated that brains were selected for. You still need to demonstrate that there was a specific increase related to intelligence, and that this increase was the result of an adaptation. Pointing out that the brain is resource hungry doesn't lead us to think that it is a positive selection because 1) the increase in size, even if disadvantageous, could be inextricably linked to another feature which provides an outweighing benefit, and 2) just because something is a spandrel doesn't necessarily mean that it's a waste - it could still be an advantage for the organism, but have no selection pressure of its own.

I know of no accepted theory of the evolution of human intelligence, just a number of hypotheses (and most conflict with each other), so there is no scientific consensus that supports you there. We also have to keep in mind that a significant proportion of intelligence is not inherited, so a lot of what we consider "intelligence" has no genetic basis.

tribalypredisposed wrote:Now, what adaptive purpose our ability to do math was associated with is unknown, and that specific talent may well be a "spandrel" of some other selection for intelligence or creativity of some kind. No one can tell you at this point. But the overall point that intelligence can be selected for by evolution and seems to have been in the case of humans is not in dispute amongst academics to my knowledge. If intelligence was subject to evolutionary selection then it must be possible for new mutations to arise which affect intelligence and to be selected for, and these would not pass from group to group by infections but would remain specific to the group they arose in, if as in the case of the Jews there was little transmission of genes to or from other groups.

That's true, different mutations can affect intelligence (for example, developmental disorders). But as far as I know, the Jewish people are not significantly genetically different from any other group, and even if they were, there is no evidence that they exhibit higher intelligence scores than other groups.

tribalypredisposed wrote:Let me just respond briefly to Agrippina. Sociology is as close to science as Astrology is. Your posts attempt to refute logical argumentation with a simple "argument by authority," with the claimed authority being Max Weber who is long dead, died in fact over three decades before we even discoverd DNA, and who was wrong about basically everything. This is not a productive contribution to the discussion. I do not care if you believe in god or not, your thinking on this is very clearly faith-based.

And as a further general point, I am getting still further annoyed by the constant habit of posters here of changing the terms used to construct straw-men. No one here is claiming "superior" or that Jews are a "race." The question is and was "different," and there has been empirical evidence provided that supports the assertion that there are some differences. There has also been a logical argument made that the Theory of Evolution requires that we not rule out the possible existence of such differences and that Jews are exactly the type of group which is most likely to evidence a DNA-based difference from other groups due to their genetic homogeneity.

If someone wants to dispute the empirical evidence, I am all ears. If someone wants to claim that the Theory of Evolution is wrong or that evolution could not/did not select for intelligence in humans, again I am happy to entertain that. If the several posters who have so far "contributed" ignorant faith-based assertions want to continue to spew their political opinions, I cannot stop them but let me observe that there truly is no point. We get it; you have a view you have committed to and no matter how wrong it is or how indefensible it is scientifically or logically you will continue to assert this view. Noted, now please wander off into traffic. Thanks.

Come on, that's a little rich isn't it? You dismiss sociology and then you promote evolutionary psychology? You're essentially scoffing at people for believing in horoscopes and then going off to play with your tarot cards.

Zwaarddijk wrote:
I knew it probably was Muslims you were referring to, but confusing Muslims and Arabs is such an obvious thing that you should learn not to do it. And the fact that there's a constant trickle, as I said, of this kind of mistake, is kind of suspicious wrt how well you actually know your stuff and how good your sources are.

What an arrogant and insulting attitude: I should report you to the RS supervisors for insulting my intelligence.
You must believe you are infallible. You are wrong: Not even the Pope is infallible anymore.

Mr.Samsa wrote:
No scientist assumes that larger brain = intelligence. The closest to that kind of claim would be the idea that there is a vague correlation between the encephalisation quotient (brain-to-body-mass ratio) and intelligence, but the correlation isn't very strong at all and it seems as if intelligence is a result of another confounding factor which is itself correlated with size; namely, neural organisation.
....I know of no accepted theory of the evolution of human intelligence, just a number of hypotheses (and most conflict with each other), so there is no scientific consensus that supports you there. We also have to keep in mind that a significant proportion of intelligence is not inherited, so a lot of what we consider "intelligence" has no genetic basis.

As you well know, I have contributed to the discussions in the thread 'You Only Use 10pc of Your Brain' Claim mainly elaborating about the heritability and substratum for Intelligence.
Now, I don't intend to reproduce here all my writings but only a few paragraphs:

"Although the relative importance of each is still matter for debate, it is now well demonstrated that Nature and Nurture both play an important role.
...data obtained mainly using imaging techniques have allowed to formulate the idea that high intelligence stems from faster information processing by the brain, and that underlying such speed is an unusually efficient neural circuitry.
...Are the brains of geniuses such as Einstein structurally different from those of "normal people?
Studies performed in various laboratories have demonstrated that Einstein's brain lacked the parietal operculum region in the inferior frontal gyrus and the lateral sulcus, while -- as if to compensate -- the inferior parietal lobe ( which is responsible for mathematical thought) was wider than normal.
....These data suggest that genius level performances in memory tasks and/or mathematics which is accompanied by enlargement of some brain areas, as if to compensate , is associated with poor social and/or language skills together with a decrease in volume of the corresponding brain areas."

There is something more I wish to add to this post.

First of all (and I'm repeating myself)), it was not my intention to get into a discussion about race-linked intelligence dispute; but I was afraid it would come to that.

As for the Nature/Nurture respective roles in the transmission of some cognitive capacity, I will be enough daring to cite the opinion of two geniuses, Paganini and Goethe.

Paganini used to say that to become a great violin player it takes both Talent and Discipline. And that applied also to himself since if he stopped only one day from practicing he was the only one to notice , but if he stopped two days or more even the others would notice.

Goethe used to say that genius is half talent and half transpiration.

Federico wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:
I knew it probably was Muslims you were referring to, but confusing Muslims and Arabs is such an obvious thing that you should learn not to do it. And the fact that there's a constant trickle, as I said, of this kind of mistake, is kind of suspicious wrt how well you actually know your stuff and how good your sources are.

What an arrogant and insulting attitude: I should report you to the RS supervisors for insulting my intelligence.
You must believe you are infallible. You are wrong: Not even the Pope is infallible anymore.

Go ahead! I'd love to see the results of such a spurious report.

My great grandfather Frenkel used to say that genius was 10% inspiration. 90% perspiration and 100% luck. But then he was the son of a Rabbi.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

tribalypredisposed wrote:Good question. In general it is assumed that larger brain = more intelligence, although most humans and academics forget this assumption when looking at species with larger brains than ours.

No scientist assumes that larger brain = intelligence. The closest to that kind of claim would be the idea that there is a vague correlation between the encephalisation quotient (brain-to-body-mass ratio) and intelligence, but the correlation isn't very strong at all and it seems as if intelligence is a result of another confounding factor which is itself correlated with size; namely, neural organisation.

tribalypredisposed wrote:The second assumption generally made is that there must be a fitness benefit for having a large brain/intelligence because brains are very demanding in terms of caloric consumption; our brains use a disproportionate amount of the calories we consume. Given that our brains are not simply scaled up for our size when compared to other primates, but are instead several times the expected given our body size, and that having such large brains is costly in terms of calories, positive selection for intelligence is the only reasonable assumption to make. Now, of course this is science and nothing is ever proven. But given the available evidence this is the scientific consensus right now, and I know of no serious challenges to it.

If we accept this argument then we have only demonstrated that brains were selected for. You still need to demonstrate that there was a specific increase related to intelligence, and that this increase was the result of an adaptation. Pointing out that the brain is resource hungry doesn't lead us to think that it is a positive selection because 1) the increase in size, even if disadvantageous, could be inextricably linked to another feature which provides an outweighing benefit, and 2) just because something is a spandrel doesn't necessarily mean that it's a waste - it could still be an advantage for the organism, but have no selection pressure of its own.

I know of no accepted theory of the evolution of human intelligence, just a number of hypotheses (and most conflict with each other), so there is no scientific consensus that supports you there. We also have to keep in mind that a significant proportion of intelligence is not inherited, so a lot of what we consider "intelligence" has no genetic basis.

tribalypredisposed wrote:Now, what adaptive purpose our ability to do math was associated with is unknown, and that specific talent may well be a "spandrel" of some other selection for intelligence or creativity of some kind. No one can tell you at this point. But the overall point that intelligence can be selected for by evolution and seems to have been in the case of humans is not in dispute amongst academics to my knowledge. If intelligence was subject to evolutionary selection then it must be possible for new mutations to arise which affect intelligence and to be selected for, and these would not pass from group to group by infections but would remain specific to the group they arose in, if as in the case of the Jews there was little transmission of genes to or from other groups.

That's true, different mutations can affect intelligence (for example, developmental disorders). But as far as I know, the Jewish people are not significantly genetically different from any other group, and even if they were, there is no evidence that they exhibit higher intelligence scores than other groups.

tribalypredisposed wrote:Let me just respond briefly to Agrippina. Sociology is as close to science as Astrology is. Your posts attempt to refute logical argumentation with a simple "argument by authority," with the claimed authority being Max Weber who is long dead, died in fact over three decades before we even discoverd DNA, and who was wrong about basically everything. This is not a productive contribution to the discussion. I do not care if you believe in god or not, your thinking on this is very clearly faith-based.

And as a further general point, I am getting still further annoyed by the constant habit of posters here of changing the terms used to construct straw-men. No one here is claiming "superior" or that Jews are a "race." The question is and was "different," and there has been empirical evidence provided that supports the assertion that there are some differences. There has also been a logical argument made that the Theory of Evolution requires that we not rule out the possible existence of such differences and that Jews are exactly the type of group which is most likely to evidence a DNA-based difference from other groups due to their genetic homogeneity.

If someone wants to dispute the empirical evidence, I am all ears. If someone wants to claim that the Theory of Evolution is wrong or that evolution could not/did not select for intelligence in humans, again I am happy to entertain that. If the several posters who have so far "contributed" ignorant faith-based assertions want to continue to spew their political opinions, I cannot stop them but let me observe that there truly is no point. We get it; you have a view you have committed to and no matter how wrong it is or how indefensible it is scientifically or logically you will continue to assert this view. Noted, now please wander off into traffic. Thanks.

Come on, that's a little rich isn't it? You dismiss sociology and then you promote evolutionary psychology? You're essentially scoffing at people for believing in horoscopes and then going off to play with your tarot cards.

1)"No scientist assumes that larger brain = intelligence." Really? So all of those textbooks and peer reviewed papers and so on that discuss the relative sizes of our ancestors and relatives (we do not know which are which in many cases) brains and speculate about their intelligence and assume it was not equal to ours BECAUSE THEIR BRAINS WERE SMALLER are written by non-scientists? Weird. It is true that there has not been a correlation shown in modern humans between brain size and intelligence. On the other hand, it would seem logically to be purely maladaptive to have a larger brain that serves no useful purpose and consumes huge amounts of calories, enacting an unavoidable fitness cost. If our brains evolved as some sort of paperweight, then they are pretty costly paperweights. Seems fairly unlikely that we would evolve to have brains three times as large as would be expected for a primate our size if there was not some sort of payoff, something like, I dunno, maybe intelligence?

2)"...there is no evidence that they exhibit higher intelligence scores than other groups." "Entine laid out the data. The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 107 to 115, well above the human average of 100. " "...the average Ashkenazi Jewish score of 122 on verbal IQ tests" - http://www.slate.com/id/2177228/

% Jewish
20-30% Westinghouse Science Prize
30% Faculty at elite colleges
30% Supreme Court Law Clerks
27% Ivy Leaguers
25% ACM Turing Award
27% Nobel Prizes won by Americans

- http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/dialogue.htm

And of course all the other data I provided in an earlier post...47% of world chess champions for one. Even if the average of Jewish intelligence is not higher than 100, as some sources claim, we do produce more outliers on the far right of the bell curve than other groups. Far more. That is highly unlikely to be purely cultural.

3)I have read your "paper" attacking Evolutionary Psychology. It is in a thread that is closed so I could not comment on the many large errors you made there. In general I would recommend that you seek to understand disciplines before you attack them or dismiss them. As Evo Psych is a new field, none of the "established" scientists within it have degrees in Evo Psych. They all come from other disciplines and claim to be doing Evo Psych. In some cases their work is world class; for example, E.O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson both do very thorough, logically precise, and careful work. Leblanc is also very good, and there are others. Then there are those who claim Evo Psych as a way to legitimize their pre-existing bias, like Harpending who is not using Evo Psych at all, really. And there are those like Buss who are just incredibly sloppy thinkers and scholars who are literally not up to the mental challenges of Evo Psych.

But please keep in mind that Evolutionary Psychology is really a new discipline with a new tool kit and is not defined by either the scientists currently attempting to use it or by the hypothesis they generate. The stuff about the EEA is sillyness (since we clearly must have adaptations from before this period and are empirically known to have some from after it as well), and the ideas about the "modular mind" are likely to require some refinement at best, and lord knows the obsession with answering the question "why cant I, the researcher, get laid" is very annoying. But the concept that we can usefully apply the Theory of Evolution, knowledge of primates and other group social species, Game Theory, Cultural and Physical Anthropology, and Neuroscience to come up with new hypothesis about human psychology and evolved behavioral predispositions is sound. If we can find evidence to support our hypothesis from all of those fields (well, maybe we do not have to have support from primatology all the time), including that X is found universaly in cultures around the world (and it can have a given range of expression and not be found in all individuals and still qualify), then we have a legitimate Evo Psych hypothesis. This takes a huge amount of work and most are just not up to it, do not have the mastery of the various fields needed or are not willing to work hard enough, and the demands of academia to publish frequently also make it more difficult.

At this point any professor in Psychology or Anthropology or even Philosophy can claim to be doing Evolutionary Psychology. Whether they are really applying the toolkit of Evo Psych or not is an entirely different question, as is their ability to do so with any competence.

tribalypredisposed wrote:
2)"...there is no evidence that they exhibit higher intelligence scores than other groups." "Entine laid out the data. The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 107 to 115, well above the human average of 100. " "...the average Ashkenazi Jewish score of 122 on verbal IQ tests" - http://www.slate.com/id/2177228/

% Jewish
20-30% Westinghouse Science Prize
30% Faculty at elite colleges
30% Supreme Court Law Clerks
27% Ivy Leaguers
25% ACM Turing Award
27% Nobel Prizes won by Americans

- http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/dialogue.htm

And of course all the other data I provided in an earlier post...47% of world chess champions for one. Even if the average of Jewish intelligence is not higher than 100, as some sources claim, we do produce more outliers on the far right of the bell curve than other groups. Far more. That is highly unlikely to be purely cultural.

Interesting line of argument. I see you are also Canadian, so perhaps you'll find this chart interesting:

http://www.thephysicsofhockey.com/documents/country.pdf

As you can see Canadian, making up only 0.5% of the world's population, make up over 50% of elite professional hockey players.

I guess the only conclusion we can draw from that is that Canadians are genetically predisposed to excelling at hockey, and even if the Canadian climate was the same as that of Brazil those statistics would be the same.