The noble savage fallacy --- All communities develop coded forms of communication, no matter what their profession. The sign of an outsider is that they fail to recognise these codes and then assume that they don't exist. This is a prejudice which may lead either to the myth of the benighted savage or of the noble savage, both of which reveal an error of judgment. My guess is that this particular idiom was coined by somebody who prided himself in being a philosopher.

Source author: Biljana Scott biscott@diplomacy.edu