Xref: utzoo sci.math:5378 sci.physics:5556 comp.edu:1881
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ethan
From: ethan@ut-emx.UUCP (Ethan Tecumseh Vishniac)
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
Subject: Re: Are Americans Intellectually Inferior?
Summary: a few thoughts about intelligence and intellectual activity
Message-ID: <9504@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 89 21:59:38 GMT
References: <14.UUL1.3#913@acw.UUCP> <997@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 40


Someone has made the comment that Americans might be intellectually
inferior because our ancestors were selected for stupidity.  (something
like that anyhow).  There are two outrageously silly parts to this.

First, the role of heredity in intelligence is hotly contested.  It
seems reasonably safe to say that selecting a single generation of
people who are marginally less intelligent than the average and deporting
them will *not* result in a substantially stupider population in
the colony than in the mother country.  This would be so even if intelligence
were strictly determined by genetics (read up on regression to the mean
if you doubt this).  Since nutrition and upbringing can be expected to
blur any genetic determinism in any society that is not a strict
meritocracy ( read "any society" for that) this makes nonsense of
the original assertion.

Second, large numbers of Americans ended up here for reasons having
nothing to do with intelligence.  Africans enslaved by their peers,
or by Arab and European invaders, were not particular stupid, just unlucky.
Jews who fled from the shtetls of Russia (or from the holocaust) were,
if anything, demonstrating more smarts than those who stayed.  Obviously
that list can be extended.

It is possible that American society is anti-intellectual in the sense
that professions that require extensive, disciplined training are not
encouraged or rewarded and that society as a whole is hostile to those
who claim to know more than the average person.  I see some signs of this.
It's interesting to note that a large proportion of American academia is
recruited from immigrants or the children of immigrants.

For what it's worth, my Australian friends claim that Australia is much 
more anti-intellectual than the US.  I've never been there. 

-- 
 I'm not afraid of dying     Ethan Vishniac, Dept of Astronomy, Univ. of Texas
 I just don't want to be     {charm,ut-sally,ut-emx,noao}!utastro!ethan
 there when it happens.      (arpanet) ethan@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU
    - Woody Allen            (bitnet) ethan%astro.as.utexas.edu@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

These must be my opinions.  Who else would bother?