What the environment can do is stifle ability. It doesn't create it, though I suppose enhance/stifle are two sides of the same coin.
A statement not compatible with modern developmental biology.
As an example, take your male/female math ability issue. All embryo's start life as females. Genetics normally directs the development of males. However, embryo hormonal treatments can be used to alter the sexual development either way. So your mathematically "inferior" genetic female could be turned into a male, or your "superior" male could be turned out a female. That is an extreme case of environmental manipulation, and you'll doubtless cry foul, but it illustrates the interaction of environment with genetics. As it so turns out, a number of studies including some currently on-going are making some pretty good progress on using hormonal environment factors to shed light on male homosexuality.
That's on average.
I'm well aware of statistics. What I'm pointing out is that you have zero genetic support for your claim, while I have plenty of cultural support for mine. The problem you have is first of all even trying to narrow down genetically what the european Jews are. I suspect that is a little tough by itself. We are not doing very well yet at understanding the genetic components for intelligence. This is most easily seen in that we can't show the genetic basis for why humans are more intelligent than chimps. The chimp genome sequence was recently finished, and one of the first very gross comparison papers published, but the job is just starting. Our ability to differentiate genetic roots of human intelligence in subpopulations has a ways to go, to put it mildly.
BTW, I'm not one of those individuals who thinks all humans are identical in any metric, and it will not surprise me in the least if there are measurable differences between any given group and another group on pretty much any metric from melanin to "IQ". The problem is that "IQ" is a little slippery in itself. It could be defined as the brightest math ability, the best chess player, the most successful in business.
IIRC, in the mid 80's in grad school at Stanford, I read an interesting study looking at Stanford's undergrad SAT admissions scores vs. how they fared during four years at Stanford. There was a slight negative correlation. A very interesting result IMO as it is arguably two measures of IQ that show negative correlation. So-called Idiot Savants might be another such example, where they are very bright in math, but fail socially. Just anecdotally, I've observed that many of the very average people I knew in college have been very successful in the business world largely because success in business has a large social component as well. Yet "IQ" metrics do not capture this at all. Have you heard of an IQ test for body english? Social ability is part of what I'd call intelligence at any rate and I suspect that it is somewhat negatively correlated to standard IQ test, although that is just a WAG on my part. |
