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Just a bit of musing that hit me while driving home today. It's on the nature of uber-competent folks in fiction who come across as chumps because of the company they keep.
In statistics, there's an idea called the standard deviation. It's a measure of how far above or below average a score or ability is, and its symbol is the lower case sigma. s if that works. :) Something that is six standard deviations away from the average, or six sigmas, is generally considered impossibly good or bad (and has been used as such in science fiction slang).
If you take the population of interest as being the entire Earth, then being six sigmas above average means you're one of the top two or three people in that measure, period. Six sigmas translates to an IQ of 180, BTW...so any IQ score above that is an extrapolation assuming an infinite population to choose from.
Anyway, in a lot of adventure fiction, the main hero is or becomes a six sigma character. Best fighter, or inventor, or wizard, or alchemist, or all of the above. He or she is then surrounded by a small cadre of five sigma heroes. They're not quite as good, but they're way up there, and can probably deal with any threat short of the main villain. They may be frustrated that they can't equal the six sigma character, but at least they look competent.
Finally, pity the poor four sigma character. He or she is still really competent. Still a genius, in terms of IQ. Still quite possibly the best fighter in the country. But this person spends all their time hanging around the other heroes who are five and six sigma types. They're the first to get captured, held hostage, or simply backhanded into the next county without a second thought. Despite being amazingly talented (or at least competent), they come off looking like chumps.
Hercule/Satan-san in DBZ. Reina Stol in Machine Robo. Ironhide in Transformers: Energon. And so forth. They're not incompetent. They may be somewhat inexperienced, or have overly high opinions of themselves, but any ego they may have is at least somewhat justified. They're more powerful than anyone you're likely to meet in real life, they just happen to be in over their heads.
Four-sigma heroes in a six-sigma story.
In statistics, there's an idea called the standard deviation. It's a measure of how far above or below average a score or ability is, and its symbol is the lower case sigma. s if that works. :) Something that is six standard deviations away from the average, or six sigmas, is generally considered impossibly good or bad (and has been used as such in science fiction slang).
If you take the population of interest as being the entire Earth, then being six sigmas above average means you're one of the top two or three people in that measure, period. Six sigmas translates to an IQ of 180, BTW...so any IQ score above that is an extrapolation assuming an infinite population to choose from.
Anyway, in a lot of adventure fiction, the main hero is or becomes a six sigma character. Best fighter, or inventor, or wizard, or alchemist, or all of the above. He or she is then surrounded by a small cadre of five sigma heroes. They're not quite as good, but they're way up there, and can probably deal with any threat short of the main villain. They may be frustrated that they can't equal the six sigma character, but at least they look competent.
Finally, pity the poor four sigma character. He or she is still really competent. Still a genius, in terms of IQ. Still quite possibly the best fighter in the country. But this person spends all their time hanging around the other heroes who are five and six sigma types. They're the first to get captured, held hostage, or simply backhanded into the next county without a second thought. Despite being amazingly talented (or at least competent), they come off looking like chumps.
Hercule/Satan-san in DBZ. Reina Stol in Machine Robo. Ironhide in Transformers: Energon. And so forth. They're not incompetent. They may be somewhat inexperienced, or have overly high opinions of themselves, but any ego they may have is at least somewhat justified. They're more powerful than anyone you're likely to meet in real life, they just happen to be in over their heads.
Four-sigma heroes in a six-sigma story.
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... except Doc, who's better than everybody else in the world at everything.
(Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers owe a lot to Doc Savage and his associates in this regard.)
Anyway, the point is, Doc Savage is so fabulously competent he may even be a seven-sigma character, with the associated exaggeration to the way he overshadows his henchmen - but then, that's life in the pulps. Everything's bigger there.
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What was the deal with his hair being the same color as his skin, just a slightly darker tone?
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Oh, and sometimes he wears a bronze skullcap which is the same shape as his hairstyle, which heightens the effect further. That may only have been in the comic books, I forget...
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