Thank you Nick. That is exactly my belief as well.
Of course, in my case there is a huge amount of confirmation bias; I have
always felt like I was the little boy at the fringe. Fascination with science,
especially cosmology and physics since childhood, non-Western philosophies and
mysticism from undergraduate days, software development as a profession for 40
years (teaching it for almost 30), MS in comp sci (AI), MA in cultural anthro,
and even my Ph.D. was in the nascent area of cognitive anthropology. (4 anthro,
2 comp sci, psychologist, and linguist on my committee). Always felt like I was
seeing things that specialists missed, but at the cost of being, mostly,
ignored by those same specialists, particularly in academia.
I have always appreciated our mutual affinity for metaphor as fundamental to
thought.
davew
On Sun, Mar 15, 2026, at 12:17 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Yes, David, This is a metaphor that requires some work;. Indeed. The
> problem is that I always somehow imagine that it is the little boy who calls
> out the king who is naked. There is some sort of deep thing going on in the
> story about nakedness and innocence. The king is, in some sense, the most
> innocent of all. and the little boy, who presumably is fully clothed, is the
> wise one and yet it is the innocence of the little boy that drives the story.
> Sorry, as you see I am confusing myself. However, in my letter to friam, I
> meant to imply that those without PhD's are like the innocent little boy who
> that can see that the king is naked. Certainly there is some kind of crazy
> innocence in Trump that is occasionally beguiling and horrifying. ("Who knew
> that healthcare could be so complicated!")
>
> Perhaps I should just drop the metaphor and speak to the beliefs the metaphor
> represents to me. Expertise both sights and blinds us; great expertise sights
> and blinds us greatly. The world needs, therefore, non-experts who stumble
> around in expert domains, because those people will occasionally see
> something important that the experts haven't seen. NSF has long believed in
> this principle. Kuhn believed it. I think it is one of the unspoken beliefs
> that unified the old FRIAM. I believe that people like us, who are willing
> to poke around at the fringes of some field, **sometimes **make a
> contribution to it.
>
> I am, as usual, grateful for your willingness to "work" a metaphor. I think
> it is some of the most important work scientists can do.
>
> Nick
>
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 6:21 AM Prof David West <[email protected]> wrote:
>> __
>> Nick, may I ask for some clarification? You said, "one of my favorite
>> myth's is the Emperor's New Clothes, *"the idea that one can go PhD-less
>> into some expert world and see something that expert practitioners are blind
>> to."* What is mythical—i.e., who has 'not clothes', the one(s) with the
>> Ph.D.s or the one without?
>>
>> dave west
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 14, 2026, at 6:24 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi, all,
>>>
>>> Meteorology, like psychology, and quantum theory, etc. is a subject matter
>>> that collects fringy theorists. Since I am such a person, I cant really
>>> fault another human being for being one. Also, one of my favorite myth's is
>>> the Emperor's New Clothes, the idea that one can go PhD-less into some
>>> expert world and see something that expert practitioners are blind to.
>>> Today's post is thus an invitation to Shumlik Hazin's Substack and a
>>> summary of my interaction with its author over the last few weeks. I am
>>> not sure it's everybody's cup of tea, but those of you interested in the
>>> role of metaphor in science might ponder on it.
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>>
>>> Nick
>>> --
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>>> Clark University
>>> [email protected]
>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
>>> https://substack.com/@monist
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>
> --
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [email protected]
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
> https://substack.com/@monist
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