The Nutters.org Pseudo-FAQ

What the heck is going on here?

Amusing musings. Abstruse observations. Twisted tales. Reflections in a warped mirror. An exploration of the nexus where the absurd meets the real. Satire that doesn't try to bite. Humour that doesn't try to be funny. Views from angles that you might not have known about. A philosophical clown.

Huh? In plain and simple terms, what the heck is going on here?

Frankly, bucko, if you need it spelled out for you, you are probably at the wrong website, but here's the deal. There's these guys, you see, and they are probably a bit too intellectual for their own good, but they also don't quite know how to take themselves seriously. So on the one hand they are on an earnest quest for truth and knowledge, and on the other hand, they're silly. They own this domain and they put stuff on it that they like. Plain and simple enough?

No need to be snide.

Sorry.

What's the relationship between the domain name "Nutters.org" and the long, pretentious "Association for the Advancement of stuff" name?

Simple. The full title of the organisation is "The Association for the Advancement of Alternative Concepts and Epistemological Awareness", and the members of the organisation are called "Nutters". The "nutter" term is a pithy way of encapsulating the broad (and somewhat indistinct) ideals of the association. Thus, something is "nutty" (by our definition) or "nutterish" if it fits in well here.

Yes, but how do you get "Nutter" from "The Association for" stuff?

That's not a very interesting question.

Oh, right. I have to ask particularly interesting questions do I?

This isn't going to be a very interesting document if you don't, is it?

Well I've got news for you. It's usually the questions that aren't interesting that get asked the most, so if I'm attempting to simulate an FAQ here then I should try to ask uninteresting questions.

Hmm. A good argument. Quite nutty.

So have I earned an answer yet?

Very well. The idea for "nutter" actually came first. It dates back to somewhere around the 1990 mark. I was originally thinking of producing a "Nutter Magazine", mostly majoring on conspiracy theories and oddball stuff, and I did a little work on it, but it was never published in any form. Nutter Magazine remained very much alive as a concept between myself and my friends, however, and we often discussed what should go in it, and what things had the essence of nutterness.

In 1998, I suggested to David Nelson, probably the nuttiest of my friends, that we should register the Nutters.org domain. At the time, I suggested that we needed a long and pretentious sounding title to juxtapose with the "Nutters.org" name. I thought "The Association for the Advancement of something", to which he suggested "Alternative Concepts", and I added "Epistemological Awareness". We felt like we had something there.

So is this a real association?

That depends on what you mean by a "real association".

Straight answers just aren't your thing, are they?

I'm just trying to get you to think about the problem here. That's an important part of the nutter concept, you see. What is your mental model of an "association", and what makes that model valid? Can something still be an "association" if it does not fit your mental model of such?

You're not a real association, are you? You're just a collection of random idiots with a website.

Listen, mullet, if required to do so I can find at least one "real" association which is also a collection of random idiots with a website. But if you want to know whether we have any legal status as an association, the answer is no. We have no such need for bureaucratic formality, especially since we don't have any revenues.

So what is "Epistemological Awareness"?

"Epistemology" is the branch of philosophy which investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge (or so the Macquarie Dictionary says). It derives from Greek: "episteme", meaning knowledge, plus the suffix "logy", denoting a science or body of knowledge. It is a somewhat self-referential concept, rather like this sentence. By "epistemological awareness", we don't mean that everyone must be an epistemologist, but rather that one should be aware of the nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. We apply this by attempting to identify and make explicit our assumptions and beliefs on any matter, and accepting that others may have different assumptions and beliefs. You can start with any such assumptions you like, so long as you build a logical argument based on them.

And what are these "Alternative Concepts" you are intending to advance?

We aren't about advancing any particular concepts, but rather promoting alternatives in general. You see, there are many things which are done a particular way by convention only, not because they are inherently right. But once something has been done a particular way for long enough, people forget why it's done that way and just accept it as inherenly right, even when the original reason for adopting the convention is no longer valid. We like to explore alternative possibilities to these conventions in order to better understand what part these conventions play. Also, it must be remembered that every currently accepted theory (in any field) originally started out as an "alternative concept". We may be so fortunate as to discover better models and concepts than the current ones.

There are scientists and philosophers aplenty who are willing to work within the dominant paradigm. We, on the other hand, consider what other paradigms are available, and whether they have anything to offer. Sometimes we just switch paradigms to consider the consequences, even if we don't seriously suggest that the existing paradigm be dropped.

I suppose I should ask you to define "paradigm".

A set of concepts shared by a community of scholars or scientists. [Macquarie Dictionary] I'd also describe a paradigm as a particular way of approaching or thinking about a problem. A set of "givens" and parameters. A formula with certain degrees of freedom, and certain fixed aspects. Changing the paradigm means modeling the same idea a different way.

How does "Alternative Concepts" relate to "Epistemological Awareness"?

Alternative concepts are often best discovered by changing the underlying assumptions of a system. Epistemological awareness helps one identify those assumptions in the first place.

What are the categories of your writings, such as "constrained rant", and what do they mean?

Nutter writings are categorised for your convenience, so that you can have a rough idea about how seriously to take them. The current categories and their associated meanings are as follows.

Random Rant

A rant that starts on a particular subject or has a particular theme, but does not hold rigorously to the theme and lacks a formal structure. A Nutter rant differs from most because most people will rant by saying "this is wrong because of X, Y, and Z, and we should be doing this instead," whereas a Nutter rant will say "what are these people thinking that makes them think this is right?" Did you follow that? Never mind. Random rants are just basically opinion pieces, Nutter style.

Reactionary Rant

Someone else has published a paper or an article, and we wish to add our bit. The subject will, of course, be dictated by the paper to which this is a reaction. This is not "reactionary" in the sense of extreme conservatism, but rather in the more mundane sense of "reaction".

Constrained Rant

This is where the author gets up on the soapbox and rants in a more planned and structured fashion. Constrained rants are supposed to get to a point, eventually, compared to random rants that just wind up wherever they finish.

Brown Paper

The pinnacle of serious nutterness, a brown paper attempts to encapsulate an entire subject reasonably comprehensively and with as little irony as possible. It will attempt to put forward all the available viewpoints (and then some) without necessarily advocating any particular one. The most important issue is the bare facts, followed by the possible stances one can take in relation to those facts, and the additional assumptions or understandings those stances entail.

Tall Story

A fabrication with no actual basis in fact, but perhaps having some allegorical significance, satirical value, or humorous content. This isn't a rant, it's a story.

White Noise

Really miscellaneous stuff. Not a rant, but perhaps just the random thoughts of a sleep-deprived brain that overdosed on The Goon Show in its formative years.

Why are there no copyright notices on the Nutters.org website?

Mostly because we believe in the advancement of alternative concepts. Copyright is an encumberance on a document, and we believe that ideas will proliferate to a greater extent without that encumberance. Thus if we wish to advance alternative concepts, we will do better by not encumbering them with copyright. Also, copyright itself as a concept has become part of an encumbent paradigm that we wish to question. Leading by example, we like to place our work in the public domain where we feel it can do the most good.

Nutters.org isn't supposed to be a money-making or publicity-seeking exercise, and so copyright is of no particular use to us. There may in fact be situations where we decide to assert some sort of copyright, but they will be the exception rather than the rule, and we will not assert any copyright that prevents the content from being freely redistributed or mirrored.

Author: The Famous Brett Watson
Revision: 1
Date: 2000-05-12
IPRs: This document is Public Domain (P) 2000.
History: rev.1 2001-09-01