I don’t nescessarily agree this happens in most media. Most superheros for example just have their powers for no reason (some “earn” them but most don’t). In many stories if you are not born part-demon or a wizard you can never be something other than canonfodder. Even in stories where training is sueful people often get OP powers for no reason.
I actually think fiction overall presents being powerful as a two factor model. Hard work and unchangeable luck. In some domains the hard work dominates and in others the “genetic” stuff does. People randomly get very OP powers all the time in many anime (if you happen to eat a strong Logia or Lengendary Zoan fruit you are automatically very strong in One piece). the details might not match up but the two factor model is basically how skill works in the real world two. With the relative importance of the two factors differing per domain.
ec:
In harry Potter you cannot be “Strong” unless you are born a wizard. There is no getting around this. In the real world you cannot be a good mathematician with an IQ of 80. This is no way around this either.
I guess I was trying to say that the hard work montage is one common narrative, but it is far from the only one.
And yes, there are inevitably constraints that get in the way of investing effort in any particular place, and correspondingly to gaining power by one particular means. But even when the path with the highest payoff is blocked, some of the remaining options will be more beneficial than others. For example, if someone has a low IQ but is strong, they could become a lumberjack, or they could become a henchman to their local supervillain.
I don’t see how your argument gains from attributing the hard-work bias to stories. (For one thing, you still have to explain why stories express this bias—unless you think it’s culturally adventitious.)
The bias seems to me to be a particular case of the fair-world bias and perhaps also the “more is better” heuristic. It seems like you are positing a new bias unnecessarily. (That doesn’t detract from the value of describing this particular variant.)
I don’t nescessarily agree this happens in most media. Most superheros for example just have their powers for no reason (some “earn” them but most don’t). In many stories if you are not born part-demon or a wizard you can never be something other than canonfodder. Even in stories where training is sueful people often get OP powers for no reason.
I actually think fiction overall presents being powerful as a two factor model. Hard work and unchangeable luck. In some domains the hard work dominates and in others the “genetic” stuff does. People randomly get very OP powers all the time in many anime (if you happen to eat a strong Logia or Lengendary Zoan fruit you are automatically very strong in One piece). the details might not match up but the two factor model is basically how skill works in the real world two. With the relative importance of the two factors differing per domain.
ec:
In harry Potter you cannot be “Strong” unless you are born a wizard. There is no getting around this. In the real world you cannot be a good mathematician with an IQ of 80. This is no way around this either.
I guess I was trying to say that the hard work montage is one common narrative, but it is far from the only one.
And yes, there are inevitably constraints that get in the way of investing effort in any particular place, and correspondingly to gaining power by one particular means. But even when the path with the highest payoff is blocked, some of the remaining options will be more beneficial than others. For example, if someone has a low IQ but is strong, they could become a lumberjack, or they could become a henchman to their local supervillain.
I don’t see how your argument gains from attributing the hard-work bias to stories. (For one thing, you still have to explain why stories express this bias—unless you think it’s culturally adventitious.)
The bias seems to me to be a particular case of the fair-world bias and perhaps also the “more is better” heuristic. It seems like you are positing a new bias unnecessarily. (That doesn’t detract from the value of describing this particular variant.)