Emil O W Kirkegaard

He misses the point with Jews; I wonder who gets it right. Has nothing to do with "bankers breeding bankers." Has to do with 1k+ yrs of ALL Ashk. J men studying the Talmud in shul for yrs. Nearest equivalent is 10 yrs of case law in Law School. A whole ppl going to Law School.

Probably not.

If you read J-writers like Sholem Aleichem describing life in the shtetl; how everyone from the milkman to the banker attended shul for their entire youth & later life, daily if possible, parsing rabbinical opinions of various J-laws, for centuries for the ppl, u may change opin.

BTW, eugenics: It was their custom to marry off the most brilliant young student in the shul to the daughter of the wealthiest man in village/ town, so that he could devote the rest of his life to study the Talmud without worry about money. And they'd have 6 -12 children...

So I've heard. But I can't find any demographic or historical evidence that this ever happened on any significant scale. And, since I can do the numbers, that phenom, even if it existed, isn't enough to make much difference. Too small a fraction of the population.

Moreover, life itself ( making money, say) is probably a better test of intelligence than the Talmud.

For NN Taleb life itself/making money is the true measure of intelligence, not IQ. Since he prides himself on his math I gave him the contrary example of probably certifiable math genius Grigori Perelman refusing to leave his 2-bdrm apt. to accept the $1 million Millenium prize.

I would like to introduce Perelman to a nice Jewish girl who will love him and have many children, forcing him to go back to work. Either that, or a bad Jewish girl with many credit cards.

In 1980, immigration didn’t figure as prominently. Now, the bigger question is: does it make sense to import more people who may have predispositions to impetuosity, etc.?