The Emperor’s New Clothes story has always bothered me. After the little boy says, but he doesn’t have any clothes on, why doesn’t everyone else just laugh and say, oh, look, the little boy is not sophisticated and clever enough to see the fine new clothes of the emperor, as I can? Wasn’t that the con, that only the best quality people could see the clothes? So why should one person’s announcement make it common knowledge that there were no clothes? The story doesn’t quite work for me.
However, there certainly are situations where an unacknowledged fact is known by everyone, and then someone foolishly or clumsily announces it, making it common knowledge. This leads to a feeling of mutual embarrassment, but sometimes the result is merely an awkward silence, a pause, and then the remark is ignored and things go on as before. This kind of situation suggests that making certain facts common knowledge is only a partial step towards social catastrophe, and depending on the situation it may be possible to rescue things by pretending it didn’t happen.
It’s possible that such “rescueable” situations are precisely the ones where the uncomfortable fact was already common knowledge, hence announcing it doesn’t fundamentally change things, and the only question is whether to respond to the announcement and thereby make the fact even more prominent. Then it might be that in situations where the fact was known but was not common knowledge, where some people suspect that others don’t know, or at least that certain people don’t know that other people know, the announcement would produce a sudden transition to the common-knowledge state. Then this would transform the social dynamics so dramatically that it would not be possible to pretend it hadn’t happened.
The point of that story is that everyone wanted to point out the flaw in the Emperor’s “wardrobe”, but everyone was too afraid to do it first.
An effect we see in real life fairly often: a chilling effect, an inconvenient truth that’s not talked about by implicit consensus, until someone decides to break the ice, at which point the acknowledgement of the problem cascades—which opens a way to its resolution.
I’ve seen it happen in open source communities, for example. I pointed out organizational flaws in project X, at which point people commented that they are glad someone finally decided to speak out.
I think the point in the story was that everyone assumed “I must be too sinful to see the emperor’s cloths. Everyone else clearly can see them. There must be something wrong with me, so I should pretend I can see them too.” Everyone, including the emperor himself, was burdened by the same self-doubt.
It was only when someone who was clearly without sin or guile said that he couldn’t see the cloths that everyone else realized the truth.
(Unfortunately, in reality, I suspect the ending of the story really would have been “The child is a sinner and a heretic, or he would see the clothing just like all the rest of us CLEARLY do. Quick, burn the child!”)
The Emperor’s New Clothes story has always bothered me. After the little boy says, but he doesn’t have any clothes on, why doesn’t everyone else just laugh and say, oh, look, the little boy is not sophisticated and clever enough to see the fine new clothes of the emperor, as I can? Wasn’t that the con, that only the best quality people could see the clothes? So why should one person’s announcement make it common knowledge that there were no clothes? The story doesn’t quite work for me.
Since everyone was pretending they could see the clothes, no-one considered the possibility that they might not exist. The child, who didn’t know about the invisible cloth, simply assumed that the emperor was naked; when everyone considered this possibility, they realized they had all simply pretended they could see the clothes.
Of course, since children are often assumed to lack wisdom, the child’s inability to see the clothes isn’t reason to think they don’t exist. (Why was the Emperor deliberately exposing himself to idiots? This always bothered me as a kid.)
The Emperor’s New Clothes story has always bothered me. After the little boy says, but he doesn’t have any clothes on, why doesn’t everyone else just laugh and say, oh, look, the little boy is not sophisticated and clever enough to see the fine new clothes of the emperor, as I can? Wasn’t that the con, that only the best quality people could see the clothes? So why should one person’s announcement make it common knowledge that there were no clothes? The story doesn’t quite work for me.
However, there certainly are situations where an unacknowledged fact is known by everyone, and then someone foolishly or clumsily announces it, making it common knowledge. This leads to a feeling of mutual embarrassment, but sometimes the result is merely an awkward silence, a pause, and then the remark is ignored and things go on as before. This kind of situation suggests that making certain facts common knowledge is only a partial step towards social catastrophe, and depending on the situation it may be possible to rescue things by pretending it didn’t happen.
It’s possible that such “rescueable” situations are precisely the ones where the uncomfortable fact was already common knowledge, hence announcing it doesn’t fundamentally change things, and the only question is whether to respond to the announcement and thereby make the fact even more prominent. Then it might be that in situations where the fact was known but was not common knowledge, where some people suspect that others don’t know, or at least that certain people don’t know that other people know, the announcement would produce a sudden transition to the common-knowledge state. Then this would transform the social dynamics so dramatically that it would not be possible to pretend it hadn’t happened.
The point of that story is that everyone wanted to point out the flaw in the Emperor’s “wardrobe”, but everyone was too afraid to do it first.
An effect we see in real life fairly often: a chilling effect, an inconvenient truth that’s not talked about by implicit consensus, until someone decides to break the ice, at which point the acknowledgement of the problem cascades—which opens a way to its resolution.
I’ve seen it happen in open source communities, for example. I pointed out organizational flaws in project X, at which point people commented that they are glad someone finally decided to speak out.
I think the point in the story was that everyone assumed “I must be too sinful to see the emperor’s cloths. Everyone else clearly can see them. There must be something wrong with me, so I should pretend I can see them too.” Everyone, including the emperor himself, was burdened by the same self-doubt.
It was only when someone who was clearly without sin or guile said that he couldn’t see the cloths that everyone else realized the truth.
(Unfortunately, in reality, I suspect the ending of the story really would have been “The child is a sinner and a heretic, or he would see the clothing just like all the rest of us CLEARLY do. Quick, burn the child!”)
Since everyone was pretending they could see the clothes, no-one considered the possibility that they might not exist. The child, who didn’t know about the invisible cloth, simply assumed that the emperor was naked; when everyone considered this possibility, they realized they had all simply pretended they could see the clothes.
Of course, since children are often assumed to lack wisdom, the child’s inability to see the clothes isn’t reason to think they don’t exist. (Why was the Emperor deliberately exposing himself to idiots? This always bothered me as a kid.)