stop mysticizing ashkenazi iq numbers

Posts with folklore about John von Neumann or insinuations of specialness about Ashkenazi intelligence are common, especially among the sphere associated with Alexander Kruel. (https://imgur.com/a/Qc078tL). There is and has been a deluge of unwarranted mysticism around Ashkenazi IQ numbers, which results from a lazy and unrigorous skimming of the literature. Yes, it’s known that Ashkenazi Jews have a significantly higher IQ than the American average — and represent [insert percent] of [insert accomplishment] and blah blah blah — but the circumstances by which this may have happened are not something to celebrate, and if you think about this for just a second you’ll understand my concern.

The world population of Ashkenazi Jews is currently estimated at a midpoint of 10.6 million. The current world population is about 7,977,000,000; the world population in 1940, one year before the holocaust, was about 2,316,000,000.

If we assume the Ashkenazi population scales to world population, that would be 3.07 million Ashkenazi alive pre-holocaust. Since we know that the holocaust killed about 6 million jews, it’s possible that roughly two thirds of all Ashkenazi died this way. But, even if we are conservative and estimate that *a third* of Ashkenazi died this way, there are several uncomfortable truths here that make IQ mysticism not just unwarranted but ghoulish:

- we know that income correlates with IQ

- we know that education correlates with IQ

- we know that income correlates with education

- and we know that the educated, and wealthy, and high IQ were more likely to escape the holocaust than the poor, uneducated, and low IQ. A person from a well-connected family is much more likely to be taken as a refugee.

So for as morbid as this is, it’s quite plausible that the holocaust’s disproportionate impact on poor and uneducated Jews artificially increased the average IQ of the Ashkenazi ethnicity. This does not mean there is anything special about the ethnicity, and much more importantly this is not something to celebrate.