Pinker on Jews, Genes and Intelligence

Steve Sailer noted on his blog that Harvard Professor Steven Pinker would be giving a lecture at the Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan on Jews, Genes, and Intelligence. And so I dutifully got myself on the PATH train to midtown NYC Thursday evening. The talk was based on the paper "The Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Greg Cochran, Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending. For background, here's an article in the Economist, here's Steve Sailer's take, and here's Pinker on Nature vs. Nurture.

Though the moderator thanked him for a very 'even-handed' presentation on a controversial topic, to my ear what Pinker presented was a spirited endorsement of the Cochran-Hardy-Harpending (CHH) paper. The presentation generally seemed to fill the need to present these controversial ideas to a very interested audience by a trusted authoritative source. It didn't seem to me that Pinker added anything that Cochran or Harpending could not have provided themselves except proximity to NYC and comfortably strong Ashkenazik credentials. Overall Pinker emphasized the reasonableness of the authors' hypotheses, the generally better quality of the genetic evidence over the environmental, the non-rational basis of much of the opposition, and the paper's strong foundation in the current state of knowledge.

What follows is a rather lengthy account of what I saw. ...Read more

Pinker began the lecture reciting the litany of Jewish achievements: though only 3% of the U.S. population, Jews make up 40% of partners of top law firms, xx% of Natioanal Academy of Science members, yy% of Oscar winning screenwriters, etc., etc. And then pointed out that Jews test higher on IQ tests, anywhere from 7 to 15 points above the European average regardless of socio-economic status (SES). But this advanced achievement causes conflict in how Jews view themselves or wish to be viewed. Jewish domination in elite circles feeds conspiracy theories of Jewish cabals; suggestions that Jews are genetically different are repugnant in the wake of the Holocaust; and Zionism views Jews as a whole as an ethnic group, not as a race.

After this preamble, Pinker basically proceeded to step thru the arguments (i.e., hypotheses) presented in the CHH paper.

Hypothesis I: The Jewish IQ advantage is largely heritable. Pinker noted the irony that even the existence of intelligence is not recognized by many intellectuals. "I find it remarkable that intellectuals deny that intelligence exists because intellectuals are obsessed with intelligence." They constantly discuss the intelligence of colleagues, students, spouses. They are concerned with lead poisoning's lowering of IQ and the injustice in executing low-IQ prisoners and the intelligence of the current President of the United States. [Note that this is a favorite theme of Steve Sailer's]. Pinker though quickly pointed out that a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the American Psychological Association defined the consensus view as embracing intelligence as a real and stable property; that IQ is a good measure of it; that it is a good predictor of success in life; and it is from 50 - 80% heritable. He did point out that while intelligence may be highly heritable, this does not necessarily mean that group differences in intelligence are heritable and referenced the corn seed thought experiment (or tomato seeds). But as far as group differences between Jews and non-Jews, this should be highly testable using twin/adoption studies.

According to Pinker, evidence that the Jewish IQ advantage is environmentally based is circumstantial, but whatever the evidence may be it should be subject to the same scrutiny as genetic evidence. And he pointed out that twin and adoption studies have shown that whatever the environmental causes may be, family upbringing is not among them. Whether it's twins reared apart or adoptees vs. birth-children, there's nothing about the parents or siblings that seem to matter.

As to the influence of Jewish cultural norms, he brought up some counter-anecdotes to dipute that Jewish parents have traditionally emphasized scholarship and learning. In sum, he said that environment can only go so far and that the evidene for environmental influence on IQ is weaker than the genetic evidence.

He continued thru the CHH hypotheses.

Hypothesis II: The Ashknazim were highly endogamous with very little outbreeding
III: They were funneled into middleman occupations by being kept out of farming and crafts
IV: These occupations (money lending, primarily) were ones where intelligence provided a distinct advantage
V: Financial success translated into reproductive success - i.e., more children. Unlike today, in the past - before the Demographic Transition in the 18th century, more wealth meant more children. And he referenced Tucker's Law.
VI: Ashkenazim are associated with unusually high frequencies of certain rare genetic diseases which cluster around neurologically-related genes. The prevalence of these disorders has often been attributed to drift - i.e, random mutations occurring within a genetically isolated populations. But CHH calculate the odds of such random mutations clustering around sets of related genes as improbably low, and that further analysis suggests that these mutations show tell-tale signs of selection.
VII: That the presence of these diseases are associated with increased intelligence. There is already evidence that one Ashkenazi disease, Torsion Dystonia, is clearly associated with elevated IQ.

Pinker concluded his summation of the paper by pointing out that the evidence is, on the whole, "iffy", that each of the seven hypotheses are reasonable on their own but must all be true for the theory to be true - but it's highly testable using sibling/twin studies etc., and that the paper "is a good example of falsifiable science."

But - he asked his audience - is it Good For the Jews?

On the one hand, Yes, everyone already knows about high levels of Jewish achievement, and better that they attribute it to higher native intelligence than to conspiracies or general aggressiveness; that as "middlemen", Jews are often thought of as parasites and bloodsuckers, and so it's good that people understand the role of intelligence in filling these role.

On the other hand, Maybe Not. If intelligence can be genetic, what about certain other personality traits - maybe they're heritable too. Pinker left it up to his audience's imagination to fill in the blanks as to what these traits might be.
Regarding Sephardic Jews, Pinker asked Greg Cochran if some of this might apply to them as well. Cochran thinks there would be some similar findings but not as strong.

Then there is the concern about what this might imply about other population differences such as African-American vs. European-American. Pinker sees the issue of population diffences being denounced on several levels. There is the general repugnance towards any genetic explanation for anything. There is a tendency to deny such a thing as intelligence and to deny the very notion of distinct human groups - the myth, as he called it, that race does not exist. Reality, he pointed out, will not go away. If it's true, we cannot deny it away. The truth cannot be anti-Semitic.
There is a distinction between Fairness and Equality, he asserted. When the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal, it did not mean that all men are clones. Political equality means that we treat each individual fairly and not as a member of a group - then we don't have to worry about group differences.

He then addressed the "We shouldn't go there" argument - that research such as this should be restricted as immoral - such as we restrict experiments that could endanger people. But here it's not the conduct of the research that's considered dangerous but the ideas themselves - ideas should not be restricted.

He offers some positives from genetic studies. Genetics have affirmed the history of the Jewish people as originating from the Mid-East, and have even affirmed the validity of the Cohanim-line of priests. Genetics also sheds light on the history of "under-documented" regions such as Africa and southwest Asia as well as pre-historic human migrations.

Final Thoughts - genetics engenders lots of hand-wringing - two of the biggest fears are 1) cloning and 2) genetic enhancement - so-called "designer babies." Pinker doesn't worry about these much. A clone is really just having a twin as a baby and once people realize that they're not literally making a copy of themselves we will find that cloning is not very popular. As far as genetic enhancement, the CHH paper is an excellent example of how difficult and dangerous this could be and so is unlikely to be attempted with much success. Pinker's own biggest fear - that the world right now is unprepared to deal with the inevitable genetic uncovering of group differences.

There was a Q&A which pretty much went over the same material. Here are some items of interest:
Q: Should the bar for publication on this type of controversial material be set higher? Pinker: Perhaps, but it's important to get the questions out there so they can be investigated
Q: What about the Khazar-origin theory of the Ashkenazim? Pinker: A minority view and not supported by genetic evidence.
Q: What about adoption of non-Jews by Jews? Pinker: The effect of the adoptive family on intelligence reduces to zero by adulthood.
Q: What about Jews under-performing between 1650 and 1900? Pinker: Not sure that's true - European Jews were seldom poor and seldom lived in ghettos until more recent European history [Pinker might have mentioned the effect that the Pale of Settlement had on Jewish life in the late 19th century.]