I look forward to the day another book makes me feel like IJ - even with the mathematical flaws :)
House of Leaves, perhaps?
Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
51–60 of 127 posts
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#52Has 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).
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. It was really a revelation to me. Looking back now, it's clear that I started reading it as a status seeking thing. I thought my intellectual friends (and especially girlfriends) would think it was cool that I actually read the whole thing (which nobody else in our circle had actually managed yet). But then it turned out to really affect me deeply. I read it again about a decade later after all those games we…
> I thought my intellectual friends (and especially girlfriends) would think it was cool that I actually read the whole thing Interesting though, considering the popular meme among women, that men think reading IJ makes them look smart. https://reductress.com/post/why-im-waiting-for-the-right-man... https://www.reddit.com/r/davidfosterwallace/comments/evsylv/...
I hoped it was clear from my comment that this was a youthful indiscretion and should not be used as any indication that I was right about any of my motivations for this at the time :)
Though I dunno, this was a long time ago, much closer to the publication date of the book (like a decade and a half before either of these articles were published), and I'm not sure this cynicism had quite taken off yet.
Also, I'm a bit skeptical of the gender lens on this, at least at that time period. From reading these articles, I think the girls I was trying to impress were likely themselves "typical DFW asshole[s]" by the judgement of these authors. Men don't actually have a monopoly on "I am so smart" vanity (though I'd agree we seem more prone to it).
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I thought my intellectual friends (and especially girlfriends) would think it was cool that I actually read the whole thing Interesting though, considering the popular meme among women, that men think reading IJ makes them look smart. https://reductress.com/post/why-im-waiting-for-the-right-man... https://www.reddit.com/r/davidfosterwallace/comments/evsylv/...
It's a Bildungsroman for the 90's Americana age. Whoever is reading it is eager to come of age, but is likely super obnoxious because they're not there yet. At least that's how I think of myself reading it at 25.
ha, well put!
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#55Has 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).
Yeah definitely, multiple times. But I feel you! The first time I read it it took me months to make it past the first couple hundred pages. But once you get far enough in everything starts to gel and it gets really fun.
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#56Maybe he "just" got it wrong. Maybe they're typos, and the manuscript was correct. Or... Maybe Pemulis gave Hal an obviously wrong derivative, and when uncorrected, drove Pemulis to abruptly end the tutoring. Maybe Pemulis said it right but Hal heard it wrong. Or... Maybe it's "just" another sign they're in an alternate universe where even the math is different. That's pretty much how I feel about it
> Maybe it's "just" another sign they're in an alternate universe where even the math is different Unlike physics, there are no conceivable alternate universes with different math. That's what's so cool about math: it could not possibly be any different. There could be alternate universes where they've discovered different amounts of it, or named the discoveries different things, but everything that is "wrong" in mat…
> That's what's so cool about math: it could not possibly be any different.
Why not? There's not much tethering our axioms-on-paper to what is necessarily true, past what we can empirically observe. For instance, a universe that is "exactly like ours, except the truth of the continuum hypothesis is flipped" seems no less conceivable than our own universe, given that we don't even have any solid evidence for its truth or falsehood in the first place.
If we're willing to treat mathematical and logical ideas as physically contingent, then it's only a few further steps to "the concepts of identity and discreteness and measure in this universe are different than ours, so all our mathematical axioms are not applicable". Though it would be very difficult to translate any stories from such a universe into our own ideas.
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe it's "just" another sign they're in an alternate universe where even the math is different Unlike physics, there are no conceivable alternate universes with different math. That's what's so cool about math: it could not possibly be any different. There could be alternate universes where they've discovered different amounts of it, or named the discoveries different things, but everything that is "wrong" in mat…
> That's what's so cool about math: it could not possibly be any different. Why not? There's not much tethering our axioms-on-paper to what is necessarily true, past what we can empirically observe. For instance, a universe that is "exactly like ours, except the truth of the continuum hypothesis is flipped" seems no less conceivable than our own universe, given that we don't even have any solid evidence for its truth…
> For instance, a universe that is "exactly like ours, except the truth of the continuum hypothesis is flipped" seems no less conceivable than our own universe
Really? For that to be possible, the continuum hypothesis would have to be either true or false in our universe, which does not appear to be the case.
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#58DFW 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…
I read it and it made me pretty upset... Wallace clearly got way out over his skis and simply shouldn't have been writing about the topic. There were way too many moments interspersed throughout the book where it was obvious that he didn't understand what he was talking about or trying to prove. I think one of the key lessons to be learned from the study of mathematics is intellectual honestly and humility. It felt like Wallace hadn't learnt that lesson and had something to... ahem... prove?
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe it's "just" another sign they're in an alternate universe where even the math is different Unlike physics, there are no conceivable alternate universes with different math. That's what's so cool about math: it could not possibly be any different. There could be alternate universes where they've discovered different amounts of it, or named the discoveries different things, but everything that is "wrong" in mat…
> That's what's so cool about math: it could not possibly be any different. Why not? There's not much tethering our axioms-on-paper to what is necessarily true, past what we can empirically observe. For instance, a universe that is "exactly like ours, except the truth of the continuum hypothesis is flipped" seems no less conceivable than our own universe, given that we don't even have any solid evidence for its truth…
Why not? Exactly because there is nothing tethering our axioms on paper to what is necessarily true. You could formulate something wildly different from ZF±C/Peano/whatever normal axiom system, but we wouldn't call it "math", and what we currently call "math" will work under any conditions
Re: Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 associated Pemulis with Polonius based on the phonemic similarity of the names. I don't have the maths background to evaluate the mistakes, but agree that if intentional they "match" with the character's presentation in Hamlet.
Maybe a phonetic similarity with "pretentious" as well