Charwoman Gene said:No, this is what you might call the "6.944 Steven Hawkings High School" Fallacy.
18 means you are smarter than 215/216 people. I'm that smart. Therefore I have an 18.
I had a high school graduating class of 1500. We should have 6.944 Stephen Hawkings.
17-18 is smart, like pretty much everyone of their relatives and stuff would be like whoa, you're smart. But they could have colleagues who can CRUSH them.
Even if we assume that percentage chance of rolling an 18 on 3d6 was the percentage of people that actually have an 18, you still have to consider the fact that many of the people that could theoretically have an 18 die in childbirth or some unforeseen circumstance before they were able to do much of anything.
But traditional dnd numbers for society doesn't hold that out. While PCs have a 1/216 of getting at 18, npcs are a different matter. 18 is literally one of the smartest humans who have ever lived.