And yet we have seen games like Halo 4, TLoU, Uncharted 3, GoWA etc on consoles that are over 7 years old with comparatively meagre hardware resources. Console optimization is not a myth if you can understand its basic principles at which point it stops being , "Magical". Of course, there are obvious limits to it and perhaps the resolution, framerate and AA options you have stated are optimistic as well, but it does not preclude the necessity of understanding why the term, "console optimization" exists and why and how works (even superficially).
Console optimization this gen was basically to limit FOV to ridiculously low levels, make games as linear as possible and throw away any AI achievements we had.