Agreed. No one here is recommending you run an SE without a fan. This is all idle speculation. One of these days I will run some thermal tests to satisfy my curiosity.
In addition to adding the fan, Apple removed ALL of the upper vents otherwise present in the earlier Compacts, including the handle vent which alone was later restored to the Classic. This means in the SE, without a fan the hot air only has one place to go: out of the back middle, or the front. Without a vent in the top of the case, there is definitely going to be some warm trapped air which will have to be relieved by conduction which is not likely to fast enough to prevent severe overheating at the top of the case.