
The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project - dsr12
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/
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pjc50
Executive summary: this is a pitch for the idea that Ashkenazni Jews are
uniquely intelligent, and that this might be linked to certain genetic
diseases. The latter should be food for thought for those people that want to
CRISPR out poorly understood genetic diseases. The former, like all instances
of "race science", should be regarded with extreme caution.

"For centuries, Europe was sitting on this vast untapped resource of potential
geniuses. Around 1880, in a few countries only, economic and political
conditions finally became ripe for the potential to be realized. The result
was one of the greatest spurts of progress in scientific history, bringing us
relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear bombs, dazzling new mathematical
systems, the foundations of digital computing, and various other abstruse
ideas I don’t even pretend to understand. This lasted for approximately one
generation, after which a psychopath with a stupid mustache killed everyone
involved."

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julienreszka
ok that's interesting

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tzs
The breakdown of famous Jewish Manhattan Project physicists by country of
origin appears to only be looking at those born outside the US.

But surely many of the US born Jewish physicists on the Project had parents
who emigrated to the US. For example, Oppenheimer's parents came from Germany.
Feynman's father came from Belarus. Olum's father was from Russia.

For the purposes of the article, shouldn't these be counted as coming from
those countries?

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dmurray
Well, the thesis of the article is that both nurture and nature contributed to
the success of the Hungarian Jewish scientists. The author says Hungary had an
excellent education system and Jews were no longer persecuted there, allowing
their children to pursue a scientific education.

For the "nurture" part of the argument, Feynman and Oppenheimer certainly
count as American.

