21–30 of 127 posts
I look forward to the day another book makes me feel like IJ - even with the mathematical flaws :)
Have you read "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon? If not, it's worth checking out.
DFW also wrote Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity -- an uncritical review of Cantor's work, which was absolutely loaded with errors. Rudy Rucker wrote a scathing review here: https://www.rudyrucker.com/oldhomepage/wallace_review.pdf I actually read Everything and More and it's probably even worse than that. Though I'll admit that I'm a little bit biased; I'm a sort of Aristotelian Realist or even a Fi…
Personally I don't agree with that review at all, and I loved Everything and More . I'm even somewhat of a "finitist" myself mathematically, but I think you can just view the whole hierarchy of infinities as a finite mode of description, and get utility from it without worrying about the "reality" of the whole thing. But that's a bit of an aside. The review-writer clearly hates the book before he even gets to the mat…
This alone is a pretty substantial, even foundational, error.
The author of the review, Rudy Rucker, is a sort of cult/underground author of math-heavy science fiction. I don't think he's opposed to framing things in a literary way, so long as it's not misleading or falsely dramatized. Like, e.g., Godel ending his days in some sort of forced confinement, as DFW seems to have suggested?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you read "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon? If not, it's worth checking out.
Inherent Vice is such a fun whacky read too. I kinda wanted to read Gravity’s Rainbow but my friend (who also recommended Inherent Vice) said I probably wouldn’t have the patience for it lol. He’s usually right
I've seen a theory that the mistakes Pemulis makes are intentional, and signal that he isn't as smart as he thinks and that he doesn't really have everything in control. I'm not sure; clearly DFW had some math aptitude but these also could have been honest mistakes. Presumably it would have been harder for editors to check these things in the 90s. The probability error seems harder to explain and likely just a mistak…
I've seen a theory that the mistakes Pemulis makes are intentional, and signal that he isn't as smart as he thinks and that he doesn't really have everything in control. I'm not sure; clearly DFW had some math aptitude but these also could have been honest mistakes. Presumably it would have been harder for editors to check these things in the 90s. The probability error seems harder to explain and likely just a mistak…
I do like the idea of Mario as a court jester though.
> Again, Mike Pemulis is lecturing Hal, but this time he is helping Hal prepare for the college board exams. Pemulis states that for the function x^n, the derivative is nx + x^(n-1). In fact, the correct expression is nx^(n-1). This, too, may be a typographical error. Another possibility is that Pemulis is simply bad at math :D
The probability that this “mistake” is intentional is related to how likely an informed reader would be to recognize this mistake.
> Again, Mike Pemulis is lecturing Hal, but this time he is helping Hal prepare for the college board exams. Pemulis states that for the function x^n, the derivative is nx + x^(n-1). In fact, the correct expression is nx^(n-1). This, too, may be a typographical error. Another possibility is that Pemulis is simply bad at math :D
Reading the DFW biography, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, it said that there were hundreds of cases where the editor claimed something was a typographical error, and DFW insisted that actually it was precisely how he meant it to be. They went back and forth for months, with the publisher eventually charging DFW a fee for all the extra labor involved. So... we can't know for sure, but there's a strong case that an…
> Intentional math errors in David Foster Wallace's work The actual title of this piece is "Dubious Math in Infinite Jest ". There is no suggestion, in the title or the contents, that the errors are intentional. In the author's words: > As I have said, I have no theories to explain the existence of these errors.
You’re right. I’ve just changed the title of the article adding “(un)” to the beginning. I can’t prove the errors are intentional, but given the author’s reputation it would surprise me if they weren’t.
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edited titles (without a reason, like abbreviating them to fit or removing elements suggested by the guidelines for elimination) just get reverted, you're creating work for the mods by not submitting the original title.
I've seen a theory that the mistakes Pemulis makes are intentional, and signal that he isn't as smart as he thinks and that he doesn't really have everything in control. I'm not sure; clearly DFW had some math aptitude but these also could have been honest mistakes. Presumably it would have been harder for editors to check these things in the 90s. The probability error seems harder to explain and likely just a mistak…
Would Pemulis be Polonius though? If he were the advisor to the king, then the king would more likely be Tavis, not Hal. I do like the idea of Mario as a court jester though.
(I'd also forgotten about the janitors, who are clearly a reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)