I read the article: http://ewanbirney.com/2019/10/race-genetics-and-pseudoscienc...

I don't quite understand what the point is. The main crux of it seems to be "argument by obfuscation", a lot of deferral to
(scientific) authority and a lot of "sophiscated" words (hoping that the reader will also defer to authority).

The author seems to argue something like: we can't know this because (1) genetics are complicated, (2) we don't have enough
data, (3) the data that we do have is hard to understand, and (4) even if we could draw conclusions from the data, we couldn't
generalize them on other populations. This seems like a coop-out - I'm 100% that in the future, we'll have more data, and
we'll have better tools to understand the data, so whatever conclusions we make, will be that much more certain.

Also, part of the author's argument seems to be "there wasn't significant evolutionary pressure on these traits". So what?
Obviously there are differences in traits that have no evolutionary pressure (e.g. why do SE Asians have slanted eyes? was
there some evolutionary pressure for that?), there's lack of differences even when there is evolutionary pressure (e.g.
female sex selection seems to prefer height, yet non-Dutch Europeans and SE Asians are smaller; in addition, the latter
haven't developed ability to digest
milk after infancy, despite presumably the same evolutionary pressures); finally, there's traits that do conform to
evolutionary pressure, including all of the ones I highlight above (tall Dutch, smart Jews, fast Kenyans). Either different
populations face different evolutionary pressures so have developed different traits, or all populations face the same
evolutionary pressures and some have failed to develop some traits. In any case, it's more than possible that there are
population-wide differences even in heritable IQ, and we just can't confirm or deny that yet (we already know there are
"sub-population-wide" differences, e.g. Ashkenazi Jews).

Part of the authors argument is also that because most studies are done on Europeans, they can't be generalized. Again,
irrelevant. The examples I pointed out are "within population" - Kalenjin run faster than other Kenyans, Dutch are taller
than other Europeans, Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than other Europeans and other Jews.

The author also argues that it's somehow invalid to exclude recent "immigrants" when studying a population. Why? Obviously
if I study Ashkenazi Jew IQ, I'd exclude other (non-Jewish) Europeans, as well as non-Ashkenazi Jews (e.g. Sephardi) and
those who are not genetically Ashkenazi Jews (e.g. people who recently converted to the religion). I can't see how that
would be "unscientific".

> it is virtually inconceivable that the primary determinant of racial categories – that is skin colour – is strongly
associated with the genetic architecture that relates to intelligence.

The author either lacks imagination, or his/her imagination is stifled by political correctness. We know this claim is
false, as "race" is associated with height (Europeans are on average taller than SE Asians - and I looked up Japan
specifically, a first-world country, so don't "nutrition" me), which is also a complex trait.

To conclude, there's only 3 possible answers to the question of "Why are Ashkenazi Jews smarter?": (1) They aren't.
(2) It's (mostly) genetic. and (3) It's mostly not genetic (nutrition, culture, etc.). I don't see the author's incoherent
rambling (you can see that I've become more and more disappointed by the article as I read it) arguing in either of these
directions, in particular I don't see any argument to dismiss (2), except a few weak sauce non-arguments that I criticize
above. I also don't see anything against Steve Hsu's argument, which is basically that IQ & height are at least partially
genetic, we'll soon be able to predict them from genes, then we'll be able to use it in embryo selection.

Therefore, I'm going to summarily dismiss your argument and disregard other sources you suggest, unless you can come up
with a short counterargument to (2) above that doesn't fail in the silly ways as this article does.

Edit: This isn't to say that I'm not open to other explanations... Maybe Kalenjin just are training better. Maybe Ashkenazi just are rearing their children better. Maybe the Dutch are eating the right food that makes them grow taller. But I find that unlikely (their secrets would have gotten out already) and in any case, I'm mainly just saying that we can't dismiss either explanation.