I would say that the existence of superheroes/villains, wizards, etc would be the kind of crazy things I’m talking about. I would posit that a pretty high percent of video games (aka low-fidelity simulations) have a player who can do things easily that even the most elite athletes can’t approach in real life. I’m talking about having physical abilities like 100x or 1000x average, or abilities different in kind such as the ability to fly unaided, shoot lasers from their eyes, breathe water, throw fireballs, survive dozens of gunshots, etc. That would be essentially “Spider-Man” in my analogy. But you don’t see that.
Untrained men’s average bench press doesn’t have super reliable sources but one source I saw put it at 110 lbs. I think that’s a little high, so let’s call it more like 75lb. That puts the world record (unaided) bench press at 10x average—not Spider-Man/Superman/Hulk/etc territory. Similarly, average running speed is (conservatively) 5mph. Top sprint speed ever recorded is 28mph—much faster but less than 6x, not The Flash territory.
In short, there are elite athletes but no superheroes or wizards.
I would say that the existence of superheroes/villains, wizards, etc would be the kind of crazy things I’m talking about. I would posit that a pretty high percent of video games (aka low-fidelity simulations) have a player who can do things easily that even the most elite athletes can’t approach in real life. I’m talking about having physical abilities like 100x or 1000x average, or abilities different in kind such as the ability to fly unaided, shoot lasers from their eyes, breathe water, throw fireballs, survive dozens of gunshots, etc. That would be essentially “Spider-Man” in my analogy. But you don’t see that.
Untrained men’s average bench press doesn’t have super reliable sources but one source I saw put it at 110 lbs. I think that’s a little high, so let’s call it more like 75lb. That puts the world record (unaided) bench press at 10x average—not Spider-Man/Superman/Hulk/etc territory. Similarly, average running speed is (conservatively) 5mph. Top sprint speed ever recorded is 28mph—much faster but less than 6x, not The Flash territory.
In short, there are elite athletes but no superheroes or wizards.