e:\doc\web\99\13\nobel.txt
Date sent:      	Mon, 30 Aug 1999 23:56:19 -0400
From:           	"Gregory M. Cochran" <74771.3230@compuserve.com>
Subject:        	Re: [h-bd] North Asian Creativity
To:             	"INTERNET:arthurhu@halcyon.com" <arthurhu@halcyon.com>
Copies to:      	"Gregory M. Cochran" <74771.3230@compuserve.com>,
       	"[unknown]" <h-bd@egroups.com>


Message text written by INTERNET:arthurhu@halcyon.com
>
Every tried to do a count of _all_ asians? We're about 60% of the 
world populatoin, Im sure nobel prizes are much less than  that.
How do Indians and Chinese fare vs Japanese?


Jews aren't anywhere near a majority, but whatever they've got has 
got to be much higher than other national or ethnic groups.


another question:


Now that I've figured out that if you believe the bible, the Jews and
Arabs were both started by sons of Abraham, can evolution over the past
4-5000 years explain the high IQs of Jews, assuming that there is a
substantial genetic component, and the two groups started out with
virtually identical genes??<


    If I add in China, I get two more Nobel prizewinners.  One was born in
Taiwan.   Four from India. One in Pakistan.  One prizewinner was born in
Korea, but is Norwegian by ancestry,    About 5 of the 149 American
prizewinners have been  Americans of Chinese descent; the fact that
Chinese Americans have more Nobels than native Chinese  is a clear vote
for the importance of environment. 
    Asia as a whole can't compete with Switzerland ( 22 prizewinners). 


    At least for China and Korea, this has been a really hard century and
I'm not sure that it's fair to estimate innate potential  based on a
period that was plagued by civil war, Communism, Japanese aggression and
oppression, warlords, etc.   That's why I concentrated on Japan.
Historically, China has been a very important source of gadgets, but has
been weak or uninterested in theory. 


    Anyhow, if we're talking scientific innovation, there isn't any in
Africa ( outside of English-speaking whites in South Africa), near zero in
South and central America, low levels in Asia generally, nothing in the
Moslem world ( Abdus Salam, from Pakistan, is a member of a sect so
heretical it has been declared non-Islamic). Basically you see it  in
Western Europe and the US and their outliers. This may change, but it has
not changed yet. 


    Could plausible differences in ways of life, over a few thousand
    years,
cause a difference of a standard deviation or so in IQ?   Sure, no
problem.
 The seletive payoffs would be hard to measure, especially because we're
really interested in what happened long  ago, but  it's easy to have
trends that change IQ by a point a generation.   




      Gregory Cochran


.  


P.S.  Try looking at http://www.at.nobel.se/prize/database.html