What sets Hypothetico apart from other e-zines is that we do not require submitted articles to have undergone any kind of peer review process. We do not even require submitted articles to contain a truth, or to be rational. If you have an interesting idea, and you'd like smart people to consider it, but you're not sure if it's already been done, or if it's fundamentally flawed, then Hypothetico is the perfect place to have it published. Hypothetico acts as a "safe zone" for the premature publication of strange and controversial ideas.
An interesting idea in its raw form, not constrained by the requirement of truth or rationality, can lead to new insights in existing fields, and even the creation of completely new fields of study. For example, if you have a strong argument against something that is widely held to be true, or even proven to be true, allowing others to study and refute your argument can give them a better understanding of why that thing is true, at a deeper level.
This is not to say that the scientific method and mathematical rigor are not important. Hypothetico readers must recognize that the published works are intended only to provoke thought, and that any insights they get from thinking about them must still be rigorously tested before they are used in practice or accepted as true.
We are particularly interested in:
Hypothetico only publishes ASCII text files, such as those made with a text editor like notepad, Vim, or Emacs. Submissions should be formatted so that no line is longer than 80 characters, and should not be longer than 200 lines. The length requirement may seem harsh, but we are interested in thought-provoking ideas, and we want to leave the reader with time to think. There is no minimum length. If you can do something really clever in 80 characters, we'll accept it.
Please use correct spelling and grammar, unless not doing so is an intentional component of your work. Your submission doesn't have to be English prose, though. It could be a poem, sequence of mathematical equations, unique ASCII art, puzzle, or even a nonsensical sequence of characters that exhibits some interesting pattern.
You may submit as many times you want. In fact, we encourage you to submit multiple times.
The submission deadline for Issue #1 is January 1, 2014. To submit a piece, email it as a .txt attachment to havoc@defuse.ca. If you have a question please send it to the same address. Please include "Hypothetico" in the subject line. By submitting a work you agree to have it published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
