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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Ok, let's say that Jews are overrepresented in the canon of HBD studies by 50%. And then let's say that Jews are overrepresented in the cultural/academic forces which eradicated HBD by 1000%. You can't just say "they have high IQ so they are overrepresented" to explain the causation, and more importantly the consequences, of this pattern.

Jews do not become overrepresented among intellectual movements equally, and their motivations for forming and joining some intellectual movements to a greater degree than others is not explained by their IQ. Oftentimes they "join" an intellectual movement and change it in a fundamental way, like the Neo-Conservatives jockeyed anti-Communism into ultimately being about pro-Zionism. IQ does not explain this.

Likewise, IQ and verbal abilities may explain a lot of the overrepresentation of Jews among comic-book writers but it does not explain the artistic motivation or meaning of the content itself.

Besides Nick Fuentism, which is mostly defined by its fairly low sophisticated anti-semitism given it seems to have no other guiding principles, what other broad political movements in modern day America are Jews under-represented in?

Tradcath integralism? But I suppose Fuentism is a sub branch of that.

While there's probably no religious Jews in tradcath integralism, nobody with familiarity with IRL tradcaths would think ashkenazim are underrepresented there.

Are there really that many Ashkenazi converts to tradcath? There have always been a trickle (for centuries now) but I didn’t think it was particularly common. Actually since the 80s converting to megachurch Evangelical Christianity has been more common, I remember reading that a number of movie directors and producers of Evangelical Christian movies were Jewish converts some years ago.

Apparently in 2005 around 20% of Americans who identified themselves as having been raised Jewish now identified as Christians.

Yes. Ashkenazi converts to Catholicism are disproportionately tradcath. How much of that is tail effects converging, and how much of that is some special appeal, I'm not sure.

I would expect that white converts in general are largely tradcath.

I would highly doubt both. The modal convert, especially a Jewish one, married a Catholic and is converting to make their future mother in law happy. They'll be exactly as Catholic, maybe a little less or a little more, than their spouse.

Trad Cath converts are a tiny minority that you'll have to explain to most people you try to talk to about it.

That’s fair, I mean converts by personal choice rather than to be able to marry in a church (?). I don’t think many whites convert to happy clappy guitar liberal Catholicism, which tends to have an audience of ethnic Catholics who are socially liberal (and of course Episcopalians and Reform Jews are the same way). White centrists looking for some motivational, life-affirming, vaguely Christian spirituality tend to join mainstream evangelical megachurches or other charismatic movements like Hillsong; they’re unlikely to become Catholics.

If a single Jew told me they had converted to Catholicism out of sincere belief I would assume that they were pretty devout / trad.

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But IQ does matter at the tails. If the mean is raised by 10 points then the effect is seen even more pronounced at the tails, like 3-4 sigma. Verbal ability matters greatly when it comes to policy and law. Yes, it does not explain why Jews may choose to get into politics, but it can explain how they rise to the highest ranks, as high verbal ability makes them effective communicators.

Yes, it does not explain why Jews may choose to get into politics,

Do Jews go disproportionately into politics? They're not exactly under-represented in scientific fields, or finance (hence all the stereotypes), law, medicine etc.