Evolucionismo, inteligencia, excelencia.

Ya sé que me van a crucificar. Mentar la obviedad por la cual se reconoce que no todos somos iguales es poco menos que racista (es totalmente racista, dirían mis verdugos). Es lo que ocurre cuando te expones al juicio de quienes en lugar de reconocer derechos para todos al tiempo que se valoran las diferencias, prefieren el camino fácil de hacer a todos iguales ignorando las diferencias. Es la reacción normal de quienes temen a la excelencia, porque no son excelentes.

Yo no soy excelente en nada. Por eso no me duelen prendas en quitarme el sombrero del reconocimiento cuando me cruzo con quien sí merece ese calificativo. Es el momento entonces de escuchar, leer y aprender. Por ejemplo, les conocen?:

Les invito a leer este magnífico artículo aparecido en «The Economist» del que les dejo con un par de reseñas:

In the Middle Ages, European Jews were subjected to legal discrimination, one effect of which was to drive them into money-related professions such as banking and tax farming which were often disdained by, or forbidden to, Christians. This, along with the low level of intermarriage with their gentile neighbours (which modern genetic analysis confirms was the case), is Dr Cochran’s starting point.

He argues that the professions occupied by European Jews were all ones that put a premium on intelligence. Of course, it is hard to prove that this intelligence premium existed in the Middle Ages, but it is certainly true that it exists in the modern versions of those occupations. Several studies have shown that intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, is highly correlated with income in jobs such as banking. […]

That small, reproductively isolated groups of people are susceptible to genetic disease is well known. Constant mating with even distant relatives reduces genetic diversity, and some disease genes will thus, randomly, become more common. But the very randomness of this process means there should be no discernible pattern about which disease genes increase in frequency. […]

Why a failure of the DNA-repair system should boost intelligence is unclear—and is, perhaps, the weakest part of the thesis, although evidence is emerging that one of the genes in question is involved in regulating the early growth of the brain. But the thesis also has a strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for Gaucher’s, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than average. Dr Cochran and his colleagues predict they will be so by about five IQ points. If that turns out to be the case, it will strengthen the idea that, albeit unwillingly, Ashkenazi Jews have been part of an accidental experiment in eugenics.