We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata slogan of the day

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
– Lord Salisbury (1877)

4 comments to Samizdata slogan of the day

  • Churchill’s famous quote is almost a corollary to Lord Salisbury: “you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together–what do you get? The sum of their fears.”

  • Jacob

    “you should never trust experts”

    Do politicos count as experts too ?

  • David Mercer

    Oh wow, a Samizdata quote of the day uttered by a relative! A very, very distant relative, but one of my ancestors was one of Katherine Tudor’s children by her marriage to the Lord Salisbury of the time (can’t remember which of her 4 marriages that that was, her 1st or second one I think).

  • toolkien

    I trust in experts up to a point, in areas that are important to me and concurrently have little knowledge. I have faith in what they say and assume that their advice will result in a net gain. But in those cases, I am an interested party to my own misery, and accept the fact that they have a hidden agenda of some sort (everyone thinks more than they say), but in total, doesn’t eclipse the benefits I derive from the association.

    It is when an ‘expert’ proffers their advice unsolicited where I automatically assume a harmful hidden agenda, or an agenda that does not have my direct well-being at heart. Unfortunately in our cultures, experts and Statism are two peas in a pod. What is Good for One is Good for All. And when one examines such experts ‘facts’ they are usually steeped in some sort of mysticism and a priori belief and everything they propose works axiomatically from there.