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Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

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Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#101

Post by feoren »

LegionMammal978 wrote: post #85
feoren wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "exactly like ours, except the truth of the continuum hypothesis is flipped" We can and do create two alternate models of math with CH and ~CH as axioms, in this universe, right now. No need for alternate universes. There's no reason to think the CH is either true or false in the natural laws of our universe -- what would that even mean? I suppose it's distantly possible that models where CH is true happen to repre…

> what would that even mean? Presumably something like "you can/cannot collect an uncountable group of points in physical space and still not have enough to fill a physical volume". Anyway, the idea is that properties of 'ordinary' numbers and logical constructs could similarly just be models specifically useful for our own universe. E.g., propositional logic only works because our universe allows us to write truth t…

It's pretty hard to imagine what an "uncountable group of points" could possibly be, or how anyone could ever test for the existence of such a thing, but we're talking about any possible universe so I can't exactly refute what you're saying here. The very fact that we can even ask questions like "what is the cardinality of a 'set of points' that occupies physical volume?" shows that our math is not at all bound by the constraints of our own universe.

> propositional logic only works because our universe allows us to write truth tables that are causally valid, natural numbers only work because our universe allows us to count over discrete objects, etc.

No, none of this is true. Our universe also allows us to write truth tables that are not valid. We do not dematerialize upon writing down a logical fallacy. Our universe does not seem to contain any infinities at all, and if it does, they're almost certainly countable; yet we can still reason about uncountable infinities without ever having observed them. Our universe seems to exist in only 4 dimensions, yet we can still reason about high dimensional spaces. Why should the constraints of our universe matter to our math at all, other than making some things more obvious than others?

> all 'math' that we can talk about would just be the 'physics' of things that work on paper in our universe

That is just patently obviously not what math is. We have tons of math that is not describing the physics of our universe as we know it.

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#102

Post by Boogie_Man »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #81
Boogie_Man wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I have and I think I'm the only person not lying about that fact.

I am curious... what's up with your "What race is Hal?" questions throughout this thread? Unless I'm super unobservant I legitimately don't remember it being made explicit in the novel. Avril is obviously French-Canadian[1], so she's presumably white, which would also make Hal at least half white, but I don't remember any description of JOI's appearance (when he was alive lol) or ethnicity beyond him being very tall.…

It is made explicit. I believe your questions are more easily Google-able.

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#105

Post by wissam124 »

dpig_ wrote: post #70
neuroelectron wrote: post #52

Has anyone actually read Infinite Jest in its entirety? I got about 50 pages in and I'm pretty sure I got the jist of it from that. The constant slog into minutia and clunky grammar made it very slow reading for me. There were some funny parts but overall the effort didn't feel worth it. I tore through Gravity's Rainbow (mentioned in another thread).

At about page 300 it starts to pay off hard and you fly through the rest. I definitely recommend giving it another go.

For the 20th birthday of the book's publication, there was an article in the Guardian that ended on this beautiful quote that captured the experience of reading the book perfectly for me:

" It’ll be a slog, but around the point where it starts making sense, you will read these words:

'But you never know when the magic will descend on you. You never know when the grooves will open up. And once the magic descends you don’t want to change even the smallest detail. You don’t know what concordance of factors and variables yields that calibrated can’t-miss feeling, and you don’t want to soil the magic by trying to figure it out, but you don’t want to change your grip, your stick, your side of the court, your angle of incidence to the sun.' "

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#106

Post by evanjrowley »

iammjm wrote: post #68
evanjrowley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Pemulis' mathematical errors be consistent with how Infinite Jest begins? I.e., he has some sort of degenerative condition directly or indirectly associated with exposure to strange mold found in the basement of his childhood home?

It's Hal who ate the mold and who's blasted at the "beginning" of Infinite Jest

Thanks for correcting me on that. It's been years since I read this great book.

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#107

Post by dkarl »

lacker wrote: post #89
dkarl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole book is striking a middle ground between expressing every step of mathematical rigor, and describing in a more literary way how to feel about these concepts I really hate this. If you don't care to understand something, why would you want to absorb the feelings that somebody else thinks you should have from understanding it? It reminds me of all the cringey posturing that undergrads engage in because thei…

I already do understand set theory and the construction of the real numbers. There are plenty of great books on that, or really nowadays you can simply ask ChatGPT. I am interested in learning about how Cantor, Weierstrass, the ancient Greeks, and others felt, as they grappled with the challenge of making rigorous mathematics handle the infinite. That's what this book is good at.

That's fair, it makes sense for people who already understand the math and are reading for the other aspects. I don't think that was his target audience, though.

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#108

Post by spondylosaurus »

Boogie_Man wrote: post #102
spondylosaurus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious... what's up with your "What race is Hal?" questions throughout this thread? Unless I'm super unobservant I legitimately don't remember it being made explicit in the novel. Avril is obviously French-Canadian[1], so she's presumably white, which would also make Hal at least half white, but I don't remember any description of JOI's appearance (when he was alive lol) or ethnicity beyond him being very tall.…

It is made explicit. I believe your questions are more easily Google-able.

Well this was gonna bother me until I figured it out, so, drumroll... Hal Incandenza is... a white boy! Or at least he says he is. Who would've thunk.

> "I’m a privileged white seventeen-year-old U.S. male."

I think it has the air of a trick question though. Most readers will (correctly) assume that Hal is white, which the text does little to dispute or confirm barring a throwaway reference or two (and which is unlikely to stand out in their minds since it confirms what they already assumed), so encountering such a question makes it seem like the answer is more complicated than "Shockingly, the tennis heir protagonist written by a white American author is also a white American kid." And for many people it's somewhat gauche to admit that you assumed a character was white by default, so if you hazard a (correct) guess of "Well he's white, isn't he?" but it turns out there was a different throwaway reference to him being a quarter Puerto Rican or something, you might be a little embarrassed!

EDIT: I forgot there is actually a throwaway reference to Hal being (at most) 1/8th Native American, lol.

> ...a great-grandmother with Pima-tribe Indian S.W. blood, and Canadian cross-breeding...

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#109

Post by mercer »

riwsky wrote: post #98
sdenton4 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of 'meeting the reader where they are,' you would want to telegraph the math mistakes pretty hard, or they would fly past everyone. Making them obvious and dumb is the only way they'll get attributed to the character, rather than the author.

Ah yes, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, a famously “meet the reader where they are” book

Eschaton was just slop for the masses!

Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)

#110

Post by Boogie_Man »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #108
Boogie_Man wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is made explicit. I believe your questions are more easily Google-able.

Well this was gonna bother me until I figured it out, so, drumroll... Hal Incandenza is... a white boy! Or at least he says he is. Who would've thunk. > "I’m a privileged white seventeen-year-old U.S. male." I think it has the air of a trick question though. Most readers will (correctly) assume that Hal is white, which the text does little to dispute or confirm barring a throwaway reference or two (and which is unlik…

You are correct, and I'm proud to grant you the first "Actually Read Infinite Jest" award. You've also come to the proof differently than I did: there's a section wherein the two urban black gentlemen who work at ETA rescue a severely intoxicated stork from the subway. They specify that James was a lost "white boy", which, along with his mother being French Canadian, inform the reader that he is "white".

You've also sniffed out my question's exploit, wherein people who haven't actually read the entire book, and who may have read the line about his dark skin near the beginning of the book, will reveal themselves because they assume the obvious answer can't be correct. They "tell on themselves" as the kids say. I smile at the idea that overthinking causes people to reveal they didn't read a book in which overthinking is a major theme. I highly suspect the majority of other commenters in this thread did not fully read the novel. This doesn't make them bad or "inferior", but lying does. They know they are wrong because my pointing it out caused them to become angry.

I've started a re read, and I'm taking notes this time. Perhaps we should start a HN bookclub.

I do need a new proof if this thread makes this one Googabale.

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