Fundamental Strategic Importance of Skin as a Metaphor
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 23 Jun 2025
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service
Comparison of Relevance to Leadership by Distinct Artificial Intelligences
Introduction
23 Jun 2025 – The strategic and operational significance of “skin” has been clarified at length by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his discussion of “skin in the game” as a metaphor (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, 2018). This was a sequel to Taleb’s other related studies widely recognized as being of strategic relevance (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, 2012; The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2007). Curiously another metaphor which is fundamental to the strategic responses of leaders to criticism is that of “thin skin”.
The second metaphor has long featured in commentary on Donald Trump as acclaimed leader of the free world (Stephen Collinson, President Donald Trump’s thin skin, CNN Politics, 25 January 2017; Is Trump’s thin skin getting in the way of his presidency? BBC, 11 May 2017; Jesse Singal, The Science of Donald Trump’s Thin, Thin Skin, The Cut, 7 October 2016). That thinness of skin has evoked widely cited comment of major global significance (Aimon Marks, Trump’s thin skin is dragging the US into wider war with Iran, Reddit, 16 June 2025). The other metaphor has also been deemed of relevance (Why Skin In The Game Explains Donald Trump’s Popularity, Atlas Geographica, 5 November 2020; Mark Goulston, Trump’s Thin Skin vs. Biden’s Need for “Skin in the Game”: A Call for Gravitas, Medium, 6 June 2023)
Such insights suggest that more might be derived of strategic relevance from the “skin” metaphor. The approach taken here was first to present the two metaphors to the Perplexity AI with the request to identify more such metaphors. As variously entangled, the metaphors frame a space in which the insights of the well known tales of The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Boy Who Cried Wolf are relevant, as previously discussed (Entangled Tales of Memetic Disaster: Mutual implication of the Emperor and the Little Boy, 2009; Complicity of governance in a collective fantasy: Emperor’s New Clothes, 2009). Those insights invite further exploration (“Big Brother” Crying “Wolf”? But them “wolves” are a-changin’ — them’s becomin’ “werewolves”! 2013).
Responding to five questions, the following exercise endeavours to elicit insights from a variety of large language models in common use (Perplexity, ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Claude). Given the nature of the questions and the answers, there is a peculiar irony to Donald Trump’s highly publicised recent rejection of the argument that Iran did not have nuclear missile capability (Trump says ‘my intelligence community is wrong’ on Iran, ABC, 21 June 2025; Trump dismisses US spy agencies’ assessment on Iran’s nuclear weaponry, AP, 18 June 2025; America’s spies say Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon. Trump dismisses that assessment, PBS, 17 June 2025). For many this problematic involvement of the intelligence community recalls only too vividly the assertion of possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq (Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence, 2004; Iraq WMD failures shadow US intelligence 20 years later, AP, 23 March 2023).
Readers can of course pose the same questions, possibly in amended form — or in the light of new insights. Curiously the AI responses do not consider the implications of “feeling good in one’s skin” — and especially what that might imply for a leader or for a civilization. That phrase can be understood as embodying the outcome of a variety of strategic goals.
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Tags: Artificial Intelligence AI
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