The 10.000 year explosion

[Cierta Ciencia]

I just read the book and now I am looking for some critics about it. (I have a blog devoted to science but in spanish, because I think poor countries are in a big need of science in easy words; there are thousand of places in english doing that). My position about the book is as follows. The authors made a long introduction about human biological evolution only to justify their central position about the "higher IQ of the Ashkenazi jews":eek:. In short, the natural selection improved the superiority of the jews. That sounds to me as pure racism with a new cloth of science. Has human evolution accelerated during the last thousand years changing the genes of the jews? Or, as serious scientists consider, it stoped around 40.000 years ago and all we have now is the result of cultural, lamarckian evolution? That means the unity of mankind, because we are all equal, no differences in our genes, only better opportunities to express them.

[Pyrotex]

I do a little bit of statistical analysis for NASA. Let me see if I can help.

 

First, you must demonstrate the higher IQ of the Ashkenazi Jews (AJ). So, divide up all of Earth's populations into "genetic groups" comparable in size and genetic consistency with the AJ. Give them all a battery of IQ exams and calculate the results. Was that done?

 

Now that you have the IQs for all "genetic groups", it would be advisable to do a correlation analysis for poverty and other factors that would cause the IQ to be calculated incorrectly. Was that done?

 

Now you must look at the spread of IQ values and determine such things as "variance" and "distribution". From these, you can calculate the Confidence Bounds of your results. This means, let's say the AJ have an IQ of X (on average). What is the 5th percentile Confidence Boundary that the AJ actually have an IQ of R, where R < X ? What is the 95th percentile Confidence Boundary that the AJ actually have an IQ of S, where S > X ? So, now we can say that we have 90% confidence that the IQ of the AJ is actually between R and S. Was that done? Was that done for ALL "genetic groups"?

 

Assuming all the above were performed correctly, then we can compare the R-S IQ range (with 90% confidence) for all "genetic groups". If two "genetic groups" have R-S IQ ranges that overlap, then we say that with 90% confidence bounds, the two groups have the same IQ.

 

If, on the other hand, the R-S IQ range of one group is entirely greater than the R-S IQ range of another, with NO overlap, then we can say the IQ of the first group is indeed greater than the IQ of the second group, again with 90% confidence.

 

So, for it to be claimed that the IQ of the AJ is greater than all other "genetic groups", then the R-S IQ range for the AJ must be entirely greater than ALL R-S IQ ranges of ALL other groups. Was this done?

 

If a statistical process similar to the above was not performed, then the claim of AJ IQ is probably bogus, or based on inadequate data and inadequate analysis.

[UncleAl]

The Jewish religion demands universal literacy for prayer, males and females. Post-Diaspora Jews in Europe were denied land ownership. Their wealth had to portable at a moment's notice. They became merchants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, professors... or they died. The Holocaust exterminated the bottom 90% of European Jewry. Take an insular ethnic group force-bred for intelligence for 1000 years then whack off the bottom 90% of its bell curve. There you are.

 

Ashkenasic Jews test 2/3 sigma IQ above the general European population. Russian Pale of Settlement Jews and WWII Hungarian Jews are now revised to a full sigma: 15 points. That is no biggie at the top of the hump. It is as you slide down the right side toward genius that the difference screams.

 

110 IQ (traditional SAT 1100) was college entry in America. A PhD in most sciences requires a 120 IQ, in physics 130 IQ. Your average European White then has a 2% chance of being smart enough to be a physicist, 1 in 50. Your average Ashkenasic Jew has a 32% chance, 1 in 3. It isn't competitive.

 

Average Brown IQ is 90, average Black IQ is 85. Your average Black has a 0.3% chance, 1 in 370. That's diversity! Go out another couple of sigma, where genius resides. Jews are 0.2% of world population. 30% of Nobel Laureates are Jews. Intelligence does exist, it can be measured, it does make a difference. There aren't enough Blacks on the planet - more than a thousand million - to provide staff for a Manhattan Project. Fewer than 9 million European and West Asian Jews supplied the personnel.

 

Who's your tatteleh?

[modest]

Who's your tatteleh?

 

Before I call you tatteleh, can you cite that info, please?

 

~modest

[Pyrotex]

...Take an insular ethnic group force-bred for intelligence for 1000 years then whack off the bottom 90% of its bell curve. There you are....

On the other hand... :eek_big: :eek2: :eek_big: :eek2: :eek_big:

[Galapagos]

I have not read "The 10,000 Year Explosion" or all of the articles below, but I am somewhat familiar with the topic and I think I can at least provide some valuable links for everyone who wants to read more about this.

 

To start off, here are two scientific articles(open access :eek_big:) co-authored by the authors of "T10KYE", one about Ashkenazi intelligence, and one about recent human evolution:

 

CJO - Abstract - NATURAL HISTORY OF ASHKENAZI INTELLIGENCE

open access pdf

This paper elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of

Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence. Ashkenazi literacy, economic

specialization, and closure to inward gene flow led to a social environment in which there was high fitness payoff to intelligence, specifically verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial ability. As with any regime of strong directional selection on a quantitative trait, genetic variants that were otherwise fitness reducing rose in frequency. In particular we propose that the well-known clusters of Ashkenazi genetic diseases, the sphingolipid cluster and the DNA repair cluster in particular, increase intelligence in heterozygotes. Other Ashkenazi disorders are known to increase intelligence. Although these disorders have been attributed to a bottleneck in Ashkenazi history and consequent genetic drift, there is no evidence of any bottleneck. Gene frequencies at a large number of autosomal loci show that if there was a bottleneck then subsequent gene flow from Europeans must have been very large, obliterating the effects of any bottleneck. The clustering of the disorders in only a few pathways and the presence at elevated frequency of more than one

deleterious allele at many of them could not have been produced by drift. Instead these are signatures of strong and recent natural selection.

 

Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution — PNAS

Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years. We tested the null hypothesis that the observed age distribution of recent positively selected linkage blocks is consistent with a constant rate of adaptive substitution during human evolution. We show that a constant rate high enough to explain the number of recently selected variants would predict (i) site heterozygosity at least 10-fold lower than is observed in humans, (ii) a strong relationship of heterozygosity and local recombination rate, which is not observed in humans, (iii) an implausibly high number of adaptive substitutions between humans and chimpanzees, and (iv) nearly 100 times the observed number of high-frequency linkage disequilibrium blocks. Larger populations generate more new selected mutations, and we show the consistency of the observed data with the historical pattern of human population growth. We consider human demographic growth to be linked with past changes in human cultures and ecologies. Both processes have contributed to the extraordinarily rapid recent genetic evolution of our species.

A more non-scientist friendly description of the above paper can be found at the blog of John Hawks(one of the other co-authors of the PNAS article about recent human evolution linked above):

Why human evolution accelerated | john hawks weblog

Here also is a review of "The 10,000 Year Explosion" by Hawks:

The 10,000 Year Explosion | john hawks weblog

 

Here are some informative posts on the blog Gene Expression containing many more useful links, including some critiques of the work on Ashkenazi intelligence, some comments by Steven Pinker, and a response to some of the critiques:

Gene Expression: Overclocking

Gene Expression: Natural history of Ashkenazi I.Q.

Gene Expression: Bad science?

 

And here is a very enjoyable and informative video of Steven Pinker discussing Asheknazi intelligence, and specifically the research linked above by the authors of "T10kYE":

Steven Pinker - Jews, Genes and Intelligence

 

 

 

 

And lastly, just for fun, if the the Ashkenazi stuff makes you uncomfortable, get a load of this recent study:

ScienceDirect - Intelligence : A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans

On the basis of several reviews of the literature, Lynn... concluded that the average IQ of the Black population of sub-Saharan Africa lies below 70. In this paper, the authors systematically review published empirical data on the performance of Africans on the following IQ tests: Draw-A-Man (DAM) test, Kaufman-Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), the Wechsler scales (WAIS & WISC), and several other IQ tests (but not the Raven's tests)... Results show that average IQ of Africans on these tests is approximately 82 when compared to UK norms.

For everyone without access, some of the data from the above study can be viewed over at GNXP:

Gene Expression: A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans

[UncleAl]

Before I call you tatteleh, can you cite that info, please?

 

Uncle Al was a professional sperm donor. You could be an unclet! Did the fertility clinic doctor wear heavy rubber gloves and a welding helmet?

[Cierta Ciencia]

:)Thanks from Cierta Ciencia

I do a little bit of statistical analysis for NASA. Let me see if I can help.

 

First, you must demonstrate the higher IQ of the Ashkenazi Jews (AJ). So, divide up all of Earth's populations into "genetic groups" comparable in size and genetic consistency with the AJ. Give them all a battery of IQ exams and calculate the results. Was that done?

 

Now that you have the IQs for all "genetic groups", it would be advisable to do a correlation analysis for poverty and other factors that would cause the IQ to be calculated incorrectly. Was that done?

 

Now you must look at the spread of IQ values and determine such things as "variance" and "distribution". From these, you can calculate the Confidence Bounds of your results. This means, let's say the AJ have an IQ of X (on average). What is the 5th percentile Confidence Boundary that the AJ actually have an IQ of R, where R < X ? What is the 95th percentile Confidence Boundary that the AJ actually have an IQ of S, where S > X ? So, now we can say that we have 90% confidence that the IQ of the AJ is actually between R and S. Was that done? Was that done for ALL "genetic groups"?

 

Assuming all the above were performed correctly, then we can compare the R-S IQ range (with 90% confidence) for all "genetic groups". If two "genetic groups" have R-S IQ ranges that overlap, then we say that with 90% confidence bounds, the two groups have the same IQ.

 

If, on the other hand, the R-S IQ range of one group is entirely greater than the R-S IQ range of another, with NO overlap, then we can say the IQ of the first group is indeed greater than the IQ of the second group, again with 90% confidence.

 

So, for it to be claimed that the IQ of the AJ is greater than all other "genetic groups", then the R-S IQ range for the AJ must be entirely greater than ALL R-S IQ ranges of ALL other groups. Was this done?

 

If a statistical process similar to the above was not performed, then the claim of AJ IQ is probably bogus, or based on inadequate data and inadequate analysis.

[Cierta Ciencia]

:shrug:What is tatteleh?

The Jewish religion demands universal literacy for prayer, males and females. Post-Diaspora Jews in Europe were denied land ownership. Their wealth had to portable at a moment's notice. They became merchants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, professors... or they died. The Holocaust exterminated the bottom 90% of European Jewry. Take an insular ethnic group force-bred for intelligence for 1000 years then whack off the bottom 90% of its bell curve. There you are.

 

Ashkenasic Jews test 2/3 sigma IQ above the general European population. Russian Pale of Settlement Jews and WWII Hungarian Jews are now revised to a full sigma: 15 points. That is no biggie at the top of the hump. It is as you slide down the right side toward genius that the difference screams.

 

110 IQ (traditional SAT 1100) was college entry in America. A PhD in most sciences requires a 120 IQ, in physics 130 IQ. Your average European White then has a 2% chance of being smart enough to be a physicist, 1 in 50. Your average Ashkenasic Jew has a 32% chance, 1 in 3. It isn't competitive.

 

Average Brown IQ is 90, average Black IQ is 85. Your average Black has a 0.3% chance, 1 in 370. That's diversity! Go out another couple of sigma, where genius resides. Jews are 0.2% of world population. 30% of Nobel Laureates are Jews. Intelligence does exist, it can be measured, it does make a difference. There aren't enough Blacks on the planet - more than a thousand million - to provide staff for a Manhattan Project. Fewer than 9 million European and West Asian Jews supplied the personnel.

 

Who's your tatteleh?

[Cierta Ciencia]

I am an atheist. And a cientist. The IQ only meassures the degree of intolerance and arrogance of some people in the field of bad science.

[simplulo]

Pretty funny comments, quickly illustrating the taboo nature of the subject, or maybe we're seeing the usual Internet response bias: the sorts of people inclined to post are the sorts inclined to troll. To answer the original post, yes, The 10,000 Year Explosion (why didn't they hyphenate that compound adjective?) made a good case for the provocative final chapter, which was the subject of their research. My BS detector never twitched, unlike when I read the posts in this thread.

 

So, "serious scientists consider, [human evolution] stoped around 40.000 years ago"? They made a pretty good case for the *acceleration* of evolution, because a group's innovation rate is a function of not only individual innovation rates, but also the number of individuals and the diffusion rate. BTW, that concept applies to cultural evolution as well. For me this was an eye-opener, and I am convinced. Until this book I was a paleo purist (diet-wise), but now I have to acknowledge that maybe indeed evolution has had time to adapt humans to their new diets (probably not yet perfectly to American breakfast cereals).

 

Genetic innovation, like cultural innovation, can occur anywhere, and genes, like ideas, belong to whoever adopts them. So a positive (probably) IQ innovation first appeared among Ashkenazis, great. If that makes you cry, take consolation, even if in Schadenfreude: the new alleles for increased IQ arose under huge pressure, and inflict a cost (there is a nice morality play for you--everything comes at a cost), and they will eventually sweep the human population to the degree that they are advantageous. The unique pressures and isolations of the Jewish population have ended, and they outbreed so much now that they won't be able to monopolize their couple of improved genes.

 

Amusingly, to buy into the fallacy that a higher group average makes all the individuals in the group superior is to agree with the Nazi's racial philosophy, just not with their specific criteria. So is a black with a genius-level IQ (e.g. me) now supposed to feel inferior to a Ashenkazi with a lower IQ (e.g. most of my Jewish friends)? Uncle Al's gloating posts suggest that this is so, but it is the individuals that matter. We're not ants.

 

But does a higher IQ make even an individual "superior"? There are a whole lotta criteria for assessing the fitness of a human being--I suspect some people with high IQs would trade a couple points for my cavity-free teeth; I would trade them back to be free of my migraines. Emotional Intelligence is often labeled a fad, but I'm sure we all know some high-IQ individuals who fail for the lack of it.

 

Obviously IQ isn't everything. As T10KYE's authors points out, and Uncle Al repeats, a huge percentage of Nobel Prize winners are Ashkenazis. What they forgot to mention was that nearly all are Ashkenazi men, not women. Are the intelligence genes in the Y chromosome, or are other factors required to achieve success? Given all the emotion clouding this issue, we're still a long way from reaching an understanding.