General intelligence evolved to solve non-recurrent problems, that in a stable environment like a farming village in Ukraine has not much of a value. GI is vital for a persecuted people, that was expulsed form one country after the other (pic: expulsion of Jews from Frankfurt, 1624), from one profession and then from the new one it had acquired. Jews were permanently learning how to survive in a new environment, learning a new trade or new - yet permitted - industry. GI was vital for Jewish travelling salesmen, who faced a new situation each time they visited a farmer.
Common people are perfectly capable when faced with traditional problems, like finding its way our of a forest or feeding a baby, but they are lost when faced with a new problem like answering a test or writing a professional article. Evolution did not prepare them to deal with new situations. I read this in Kanosawa. So, if one wants to evaluate the IQ of an unknown person, without submitting him to a formal IQ test, one should watch him solving a problem he never met before. Maybe operating a new cell phone would do.
6 comments:
Gypsies get persecuted and expulsed and are not known as a high IQ group.
Gypsies have been diasporic for a much shorter time than Jews, only arriving in Europe in the 14th century.
Also, they survived mostly in the less civilized areas of medieval Europe, unlike the early Ashkenazi Jews who were formed in the heart of the Frankish kingdoms.
So, IMO, the "Gypsy strategy" can work, but is less flexible and robust than the "Jewish strategy".
It is astonishing how the Gypsies survived at all in Europe, and not only that, but they multiplied to ten or so million.
The upside of stupidity is lack of reproductive self-control.
It is known as the "r-strategy".
It works.
Anon.
I am not sure that r people is more fertile than the other one - the distinction seems not appliable to humans.
They are more fecund, which is slightly different from more fertile.
However, it does apply to people as well, this r-K continuum; r people not only have more children out of wedlock, their incidence of twinning is much higher.
Thus it is biology at work here, and not just culture.
Anyway, culture is usually just biology at work as well.
Anon.
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