The source of Jewish success

Brett “the bedbug” Stephens put out an article about Jewish IQ and success, The Secrets of Jewish Genius: It’s not about having higher I.Q.s.

I think in some regards, supposed Jewish intellectual and professional dominance is overstated. I have read many science papers in fields such as math, medicine, and physics, and Jews hardly seem vastly over-represented. Maybe by my estimate Ashkenazi Jews are only 5% of authors or co-authors, compared to only being 1-2% of the general population. So they are somewhat over-represented, but 5% is hardly dominating as far as the hard sciences are concerned. This over-representation can be explained by a slightly higher mean IQ compared to gentiles and perhaps also Jewish culture prioritizing education, compared to gentiles. A Jew with an IQ of 130 is more likely to enter an ‘intellectual’ line of work than a gentile of a similar IQ.

Jews, however, seem to be way more dominant relative to their population in business, tech, entertainment, social sciences (such as economics), banking, and politics [some have likened Trump to being ‘the first Jewish president,’ not because he is Jewish, but because he is so heavily influenced by and deferential to them]. Yet some of Trump’s harshest critics and some of the people who are trying to remove him from office also also Jewish, so Jews are represented across the entire political spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right. Some of this can be explained by IQ and a Jewish cultural predilection to intellectualism, but probably also a fair helping of nepotism and favoritism, too.

Maybe rather than superior IQs, it is superior social networking skills. Jews are like a giant extended family. I read a stat that virtually all U.S. Jews are 4th-cousin related to each other. So you can pick two seemingly distinct, unrelated Ashkenazi Jews in the US, such as on opposite coasts, and link them to each other within 4-5 generations. I’ve seen instances in which a tech or social media company is founded by a Jew and then all the early investors and backers are also Jewish. We’ve gone from 5% representation to something like 75% in some fields.