site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30315 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

[unnecessarily long, unoriginal, we've discussed this many times before, tldr jews good genes why so hard to notice this]

It is - in a literal sense - true that many minority groups are, sometimes, overrepresented. Again in a literal sense - it's true that having an unusual upbringing sometimes pushes someone towards success.

Say I have $200k in gold bars stashed under my mattress. I'm suspected for corruption, the cops raid my house and find it. Have I done anything wrong? Well, there's nothing wrong with keeping private property in your house. And it's a gift from a friend. Who doesn't get gifts from friends, a bit of money here and there? Again, both - literally - true. You can squint and imagine there's a syllogism there - taking gifts from friends is fine, the gold bars were gifts from friends, so...

The dose makes the poison. If the laundromat's getting a few thousand extra bucks every year, that's usual variation, maybe he's good at advertising. A few million extra bucks ... something needs explaining.

How overrepresented are Jews, exactly? Are they represented about as much as Muslims? What about Hispanics, Blacks, or Native Americans? There's a lot of diversity and unique life experience to go around. Does this help all of them?

But, like, Jews make up 25%-50% of all Nobel prizes, aside from Peace, awarded to US citizens. (note that some of those are half-jewish, but this isn't that important.) They're also 2% of the US population. That's quite the difference! What about Hispanics, Muslims, Indians?

It's not just Nobels. I, like everyone, just click links around Wikipedia sometimes. Especially in math, science, technology. And enough of the names are jewish that you can't help but to notice! In the arts, journalism, or politics - there are fewer jews than in math, but still a lot more than you'd naively expect.

I also spend a lot of the time on the internet, in various places. I'm quite intelligent, as other people are here, so I select for communities of smart and driven people. And in each community, there's an obvious hierarchy of competence and smarts. And, as I spend more time in a community and get to know the smarter people - a lot of them end up being Jewish. Even here, the person whose writing I (currently) appreciate the most happens to be Jewish... This happens in real life too!

But my impression is that this is surprisingly true of many minority ethnicities and religious groups--almost as though having a mainstream upbringing results in a milquetoast adulthood. Or, alternatively, that being heterogeneous to the modal citizen of your country is quite naturally going to result in placement at one of the bell's tails

Does this really, when we take another look at it, even come close to explaining overrepresentation? A lot of Hispanic immigrants, and Muslims, have fascinating cultures and home lives. And gives them a boost in niche, well-known fields. I guess that's why our community sprung from the blog of Scott al-Iskandar, in turn inspired by the rationality writings of E. Y. Khowsjee, and don't forget the reactionary critic Carlos Yarvin.

There is something to explain here. Looking away isn't virtuous, and telling the 100k who liked that tweet to pretend this is just like every other ethnic minority won't help. The usual rationalist explanation is just 'jews have high IQ because genes'. Which seems to fit fine, here, although our friend SS would disagree.

The claim that jewish achievement isn't remarkable, or isn't unique, or something, is something I hear sometimes. Or, it's claimed that said achievement is remarkable, but is, like, cultural, because of the Torah or just trying really hard at school. I don't think these are plausible, when compared to the average non-Jewish example of a white family that really pushes for success at school, or immigrant family with some niche ethnic tradition.

Sometimes one makes an intellectual mistake and it's just - okay, I forgot something important, I did the math wrong - but other times you're just not looking. I think to explain away Jewish achievement in politics or elsewhere with 'every minority is like this' can only explained by not looking.

In the case of politics specifically, that infographic seems to be about the cabinet. So, how Jewish is the Biden cabinet? Let's completely ignore the 4chan graphic, which ... even if it's accurate, it's still not worth looking at as a source of real information, because it's a 4chan graphic. Let's go with Wikipedia. Jews: Blinken Yellen Garland Mayorkas Hanes (half) Bernstein Lander Klain Zients. And then twenty more of other backgrounds. So a little under third are jewish, which is a ton relative to 2%. And then two Asians, two Indians, one Hispanic. (Also five Black) I don't see muslims. Non-jewish whites are are about where they should be by % of population. *1

This is ... significant. And a lot more so than Asians and Indians, or even Hispanics. It's reasonable to notice, and wonder why. It's reasonable to notice that people don't want you to notice that. It's especially reasonable to notice that if White people were 2% of the population and 30% of appointments, the standards that you'd expect to be applied would declare this to be an extreme case of racism. And then it's ... of less obvious reasonableness to start Heiling the Furher, but it clearly does lead there.

Cardiologists aren't worse people than the average doctor. But people think they are if they aren't subtle thinkers and are disproportionately exposed to anecdotes of them acting poorly, leading them to create and share those anecdotes in a cycle. But before you accuse someone of Chinese Robbering, you should check to make sure the claimed pattern isn't there! Before explaining a claim away as motivated reasoning, it's good to check if it's actually true!

And when you miss something like this, as I did in the not-so-recent past - it's worth asking, why? When I think about something, I'm trying to understand it, not just rationalize whatever the common beliefs and taboos are. And that was as true in the past as it is today. But the explanation that Jews just have good culture, or it's just pattern recognition out of control, came easily to past-me too. Just as easily as the 'rational arguments for God' came to Christian apologists. It's unpleasant to realize you are (ie past-me was) just lazily making up arguments for an assumption you aren't questioning because it's just, like, true, and also it's be terrible if it wasn't true. But it's true! And I got into many arguments about this, and made several very competent defenses of "there's nothing going on here" before, after I bumped into the wall for the fifth time, I noticed the wall.

And if you're bumping around the intellectual plain, guided by invisible walls you aren't even aware of, you might be led to the wrong places.

Now, you're right that minorities often specialize in specific occupations. Patel Hotels, etc. But market-dominant minorities are, usually, high IQ minorities. Indians are well-represented as tech company CEOs. But we've also had a billion of them to pick from by immigration.

And, yeah, when you relate to the elite jews by seeing them on TV and in the news, rather than being in their social circles, that easily leads to conspiracies based on resentment. And the Anna-Marie Loupis from the tweet is a well known covid conspiracist, with claims like lasers caused the hawaii fire because blue color didnt burn. I'm not sure what the right rhetorical move here is if you want to fight antisemitism, but being honest about the cause of elite jews might be better than keeping up the current incorrect norms and creating conditions where people on the alt-right notice the lies!

*1 I'm just including everyone the page lists, not bothering about some people joining late and others leaving early, I don't think that matters here.

I mean, it appears that Ashkenazi Jews are literally the smartest group in the world by average IQ(it’s possible that some Brahmin or middle eastern Christian subgroup, or something like that where there’s a sliced up minority of a minority that’s already notable for high IQ’s, has a higher average IQ, but I haven’t seen any direct evidence). Which raises the question of how much Jewish overrepresentation is specifically Ashkenazi, and I would bet that’s a lot of it.

Let's look at the list of Israeli PMs (Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrahi):

  • Ben-Gurion: A
  • Sharett: A
  • Eshkol: A
  • Allon: A/?
  • Meir: A
  • Rabin: A
  • Begin: A
  • Shamir: A
  • Peres: A
  • Netanyahu: A/?
  • Barak: A
  • Sharon: A
  • Olmert: A
  • Bennett: A
  • Lapid: A

There are just two PMs that have moms that might theoretically have non-Ashkenazi roots (born in Mandatory Palestine), but that's probably because I can't read the Hebrew Wikipedia, only the English one.

Is it the case of intra-Jewish discrimination? Did the Ashkenazi sponsors of Israel and the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi New Yishuv settlers discriminate against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fleeing post-independence pogroms in Muslim countries?

UPD: I also checked the current cabinet. They are younger, so their origins are less clear for many members. I had to resort to phrenology in some cases.

  • Benjamin Netanyahu: A/?
  • Yariv Levin: A
  • Aryeh Deri: S
  • Moshe Arbel: A (Haredi)
  • Uriel Buso: A/S
  • Yitzhak Wasserlauf: A/?
  • Amichai Chikli: M
  • Yitzhak Goldknopf: A
  • May Golan: M
  • Avi Dichter: A
  • Shlomo Karhi: S?M?
  • Miki Zohar: S/M
  • Yoav Gallant: A
  • Bezalel Smotrich: A
  • Nir Barkat: A
  • Yoav Kisch: A
  • Haim Biton: ?
  • Israel Katz: A
  • Idit Silman: S
  • Eli Cohen: S
  • Ofir Sofer: M
  • Galit Distel-Atbaryan: M
  • Gila Gamliel: M
  • Mordechai Eliyahu: M
  • Meir Porush: M?
  • Ya'akov Margi: S
  • Yoav Ben-Tzur: ?
  • Orit Strook: A/?
  • Itamar Ben-Gvir: M
  • Michael Malchieli: ?
  • Ofir Akunis: A
  • Ron Dermer: A
  • Haim Katz: A
  • Miri Regev: S
  • Benny Gantz: A
  • Gideon Sa'ar: A/M
  • Gadi Eizenkot: S
  • Hili Tropper: A?
  • Yifat Shasha-Biton: S/M

It looks like Israel did a stellar job integrating Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. It's also surprising how many of the ministers live in the settlements.

I think Israel has some history of discrimination by Ashkenazi against non-Ashkenazi Jews, but I’m unsure how much.

I updated my original comment with the members of the cabinet.

It seems relevant that the current Israeli government is a large coalition agreement and Israeli political parties are split partially on ethnoreligious lines, though, doesn’t it? Major confound there.

I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.

I checked what the Shas party is about and it "primarily represents the interests of Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Jews", which explains their prevalence in its ranks, but even many Likud ministers are Mizrahi/Sephardi.

I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.

G7 is a pretty big confounder itself, given than none of the countries there are Muslim. I don't know where to find a good list of Israeli Jewish CEOs detailing their ancestry. I casually browsed the list of scientists from TAU, Hebrew University and Technion, and it does look like they are mostly Ashkenazi, with random interesting exceptions like Moshe Many, who's an OG Israeli from the Old Yishuv.

My understanding of Israeli politics is that you see lots more mizrahi Jews, and sometimes more Sephardic Jews, in political appointee positions than would get in by pure merit for the same reason there’s lots of black political appointees in the US- it holds up parts of political coalitions- except with the confounder that Israel doesn’t have longstanding coalition agreements, and ethnic minorities are spread out across the spectrum instead of being all democrats except for Vietnamese Cubans and tejanos. So I wouldn’t read too much into ministers and political appointees.

Obviously, most Jewish CEOs in Germany and Russia are Ashkenazi. Equally obviously there are very few Jewish ceos in Muslim countries, or Japan. So G7 is a confounder but US/Canada/Australia might be a better comparison(maybe add France, which I believe has both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews and/or Brazil, which has a lot of every ethnic group you could care to name). Of course I’m not sure that finding their ancestry is easy, but I’d bet that a representative sample would show that Sephardi Jews are barely overrepresented, if at all, while Ashkenazi Jews are very overrepresented. Open to corrections, of course, but HBD is a pretty big confounding factor that comes down on one side of the equation.

There are two explanations: Jews are better or Jews have some weird conspiracy power.

I do think the bigger objection is the number of blacks (that appears political and not merit).

It's possible that Jews engage in a similar behavior that many ethnic groups do, but they happen to be better at it because of their talents. This dovetails with the recent thread on stigmergy vs conspiracy. There is no "conspiracy" needed in the vein of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to vindicate questions surrounding Jewish behavior and power. "Merit vs conspiracy" is a false dichotomy.

Is it? If you dole out benefits to in group but are very good at hiding it because you are more talented compared to others, then you are superior to others who lack the ability to hide it.

Superiority is defined by many dimensions by my estimation, dimensions that can be reduced towards civilizationally-oriented and eugenic behavior. The talent to deceive others is a talent, but having more of that talent does not make you superior. Maybe a swindler has a much higher IQ and silver tongue compared to his hapless victim, but I consider "merit" along that dimension to be contemptible and would raise the question for how civilizational order should deal with such people.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats