Kind of inspired by the fact that today I saw some random DRV3 deal where Izuru is supposed to fight Sakura who is ten times stronger and faster than he is because he knows all the possible martial arts, followed by Dragon Ball Super where Goku has achieved the ability to fight without thinking. There's always this deal about how a super smart guy with otherwise no distinguishing physical attributes is supposed to be good at fighting because he's, well, smart. Here I'm not talking about things that are more like the butterfly effect, where the smart guy does some random thing that causes a fifteen step chain reaction that eventually ends up with a heavy weight hitting his opponent (I remember Slash did that in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). That actually seems believable if your intellect is enough to basically make predictions on the state of the world. Here it's more like someone punches at you and you think 'oh he's punching here so I do this and then that and boom I win!' The guy doing this usually doesn't have enhanced thinking speed, so in the time it takes him to think about this he'd already get punched in the face. Actually, that's sort of the point of Dragonball Super because thinking about how to do something is not the fastest way to react something. That's why people in real life train to a point where you can do something on reflex, so I guess Dragonball does get this right. But even if you assume the person doing this can think arbitrarily fast, it's not like knowing an attack is coming is very useful if you lack the physical skills to overcome it.
In The Matrix anybody can upload all the possible martial arts in the world into their brain but it doesn't really help them dealing with Agents that have a gun. Nobody besides Neo can dodge bullets and he obviously moves a lot faster than normal guys for being The One which is responsible for his feats. A while back an old Chinese taichi master challenged some lowly ranked MMA fighter and pretty much got pulverized in ten seconds. Before the fight he was talking about how he'll use taichi principles like yin and yang to redirect force and so on, but it turns out his face wasn't very good at redirecting force. I was at the Chinese boards and there's a nontrivial minority that was genuinely surprised at the outcome. Well, the same population also believes Bruce Lee can beat up multiple guys twice his size like the movies, but at least Bruce Lee is quite physically fit. While I'd like to say that people might be just stupid and will believe WWE is real, but even if you believe wrestling is real you still wouldn't come to the idea that some skinny guy can just outthink his way out of a fight. How does such a ridiculous idea show up as a recurring theme? It seems like I see this more prevalent in Asian stuff. Is it because Asians aren't likely to be beating anybody with brute force so that the idea of brain beats brawn sounds better? But the popular wuxia (martial arts fiction) genre pretty much always stresses on stuff like chi which might as well be a superpower like the Force, and if you channel some mystical energy it's perfectly sensible that you don't need to be too physically strong when you can throw fireballs instead. I don't think I've ever seen Ryu portrayed as a smart guy anywhere. Well, the Hong Kong stuff always give him high 'fighting IQ' the same way you'd say LeBron has great 'basketball IQ', but that's closer to just having an instinctual grasp on the subject as opposed to actually being smart.
In The Matrix anybody can upload all the possible martial arts in the world into their brain but it doesn't really help them dealing with Agents that have a gun. Nobody besides Neo can dodge bullets and he obviously moves a lot faster than normal guys for being The One which is responsible for his feats. A while back an old Chinese taichi master challenged some lowly ranked MMA fighter and pretty much got pulverized in ten seconds. Before the fight he was talking about how he'll use taichi principles like yin and yang to redirect force and so on, but it turns out his face wasn't very good at redirecting force. I was at the Chinese boards and there's a nontrivial minority that was genuinely surprised at the outcome. Well, the same population also believes Bruce Lee can beat up multiple guys twice his size like the movies, but at least Bruce Lee is quite physically fit. While I'd like to say that people might be just stupid and will believe WWE is real, but even if you believe wrestling is real you still wouldn't come to the idea that some skinny guy can just outthink his way out of a fight. How does such a ridiculous idea show up as a recurring theme? It seems like I see this more prevalent in Asian stuff. Is it because Asians aren't likely to be beating anybody with brute force so that the idea of brain beats brawn sounds better? But the popular wuxia (martial arts fiction) genre pretty much always stresses on stuff like chi which might as well be a superpower like the Force, and if you channel some mystical energy it's perfectly sensible that you don't need to be too physically strong when you can throw fireballs instead. I don't think I've ever seen Ryu portrayed as a smart guy anywhere. Well, the Hong Kong stuff always give him high 'fighting IQ' the same way you'd say LeBron has great 'basketball IQ', but that's closer to just having an instinctual grasp on the subject as opposed to actually being smart.
