[mynameishere]

http://www.jinfo.org/Fields_Mathematics.html

25 percent of fields medal winners vs. 0.227 percent of world population. >100x difference. [discussion of statistical signfigance omitted.] Nature vs. Nurture is a stupid discussion, as "nurture" is costly and transient and a ripe subject for government boondoggles. People are different. No way around it.

On the other hand, a basic command of mathematics can be widely shared, and learned at most ages.

[DaniFong]

That may well be true, but I think the problem of disentangling the incredibly powerful Jewish cultural influence (or any other cultural, influence, really, as a half-asian I can tell you my heritage helped push me) from whatever biological differences there might be is an incredibly tricky one. So I think that asserting such conclusions here is either chauvinist or premature.

[narag]

Assuming as little as 10% could be nature, the lack of genetic conditions would mean a lot for top achievements.

Also talking about a certain community doesn't necesarily mean something related to race. There could be some kind of selection for people that become jew marrying or people that quits.

[DaniFong]

I would also like to ask, how could such conclusions, were they actually true, be put to use by society?

I haven't been able to identify any way to use such information which I wouldn't consider deeply immoral. But I have unusual views here.

[byrneseyeview]

It would help us avoid expensive mistakes to correct non-problems. Imagine a world in which height is as politically charged as race. Every year, short people rail against the overrepresentation of the tall people in sports, in politics, in film, etc. And every year, the tall people talk about how some of their best friends are short, they themselves aren't prejudiced, they understand there's a horrible legacy of discrimination, perhaps short-person-related affirmative action programs are necessary.

But then some annoying researcher points out that of course tall people are better at basketball, because they are closer to the basket (among other things). And that within ethnic groups, height correlates with intelligence because of a confouding variable: malnutrition is known to reduce cognitive ability and height, and cognitive ability correlates very well with income.

So it basically transforms something from a political problem to a scientific fact. There is no longer anything to rectify, because everything is as it should be -- people have characteristics that make them better or worse at various tasks, and that's just the way things are. A short person who tries hard can succeed at tall-person fields, but not to the extent that they could if they were tall. A tall person can live a long time if they try hard to be healthy, but not as long as they could if they were short.

[narag]

"...how could such conclusions, were they actually true, be put to use by society?"

If there's a cause, someone could try to find out what it is and it might be useful. Or not. But knowledge isn't moral or inmoral, it's knowledge. Wishful ignorance is wrong for my sense of morality.

[emmett]

There are systematic environmental differences for different cultures as well. This isn't to say "people aren't different", but rather that until you've estimated environmental differences and gene-environment interactions you know almost nothing about the nature vs. nurture debate.

See http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html for a great summary, including specifically questions about Jewish intelligence. I know it's a bit long, but I promise it's worth reading.