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Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
- lou1306 1y ago> the Mean Value Theorem for integrals is a theoretical tool for proving the existence of this particular x'. It does not, however, offer any method of finding the value of x'. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine how the Mean Value Theorem for integrals could be employed in Pemulis' Eschaton calculations. Knowing the character, at least this one could be explained as yet another parlour trick from Michael Pemulis. God knows how he actually calculated those values.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> 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.
- caminanteblanco 1y agoYes, the title entered here on HN is misleading and misrepresents the actual article.
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- rafaepta 1y agoYou’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.
- Jtsummers 1y agoInstead of editing the title, the guidelines have this to say: > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 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.
- FL33TW00D 1y agoI look forward to the day another book makes me feel like IJ - even with the mathematical flaws :)
- lemonberry 1y agoHave you read "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon? If not, it's worth checking out.
- chamomeal 1y agoInherent 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
- spondylosaurus 1y agoBleeding Edge is another fun, (relatively) short read if you want to go back for more Pynchon.
- lemonberry 1y agoInherent Vice was great too. Gravity's Rainbow took me a few times to get into but it was a wild ride. His early book "The Crying of Lot 49" was also really good.
- igor47 1y agoAs detective Blanc says in Glass Onion, "nobody has read" Gravity's Rainbow
- Boogie_Man 1y agoWhat race is Hal?
- dpig_ 1y agoNot sure, but his dad's got a microwave for a head.
- npilk 1y agoI'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 mistake. Edit - While searching a bit more about this, I found an interesting perspective on a message board: > The main thing that I think argues for Pemulis not being as smart as he thinks he is, is that he is the analogue of Polonious from Hamlet. In Hamlet, the court jester (the "fool") is actually really wise and always speaks the truth (=Mario), while the King's supposedly "wise" counselor, Polonious, actually gets everything wrong. I find that pretty compelling. I hadn't really thought about deeper correspondences with Hamlet beyond Hal and his parents. https://infinitesummer.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=471 https://infinitesummer.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=471
- dbtc 1y agoAnd the title
- spondylosaurus 1y agoWould 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.
- npilk 1y agoGood point. Although the book isn't any sort of adaptation, so I could see including an allusion to the Polonius character even in a slightly different role. (I'd also forgotten about the janitors, who are clearly a reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)
- eszed 1y agoI 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.
- andy_xor_andrew 1y ago> 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
- lacker 1y agoReading 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 any particular little weird error, DFW intended it to be this way. Especially for a "basic calculus" issue like this, for someone who wrote a whole book on the mathematical history of infinity. (Which arguably has its own errors, but those tend to fall more in the category of simplifications for the lay reader, IMO.)
- spondylosaurus 1y agoI've definitely noticed some of those odd one-off typos, like misspelling the NIKKEI stock exchange as NIKEI, but I had always just assumed some of those were bound to slip through in such a long, dense novel, even with an astute editor :P It sounds like that may not be the case after all...
- gowld 1y ago> (Which arguably has its own errors, but those tend to fall more in the category of simplifications for the lay reader, IMO.) They were more mis-simplifications by the lay writer.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> 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 any particular little weird error, DFW intended it to be this way. You'd have to assume that every time he got called out on an obvious error and insisted he'd meant it all along, he was telling the truth.
- arh68 1y agoMaybe 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
- feoren 1y ago> 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 math in our universe is universally (multiversally?) wrong.
- LegionMammal978 1y ago> 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.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> 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.
- NewsaHackO 1y agoI haven’t read IJ in a while, but I don’t think I agree with the first one. Unless he specifically said that each player has an equal chance of winning, I would not assume that to be the case.
- sanderjd 1y agoInteresting! But then it seems like he would have said it a bit differently, that the odds of that particular tournament with those specific players ending in a tie were much lower.
- trefoiled 1y agoThis isn't the only example of a debate over intentionality in mistakes in Infinite Jest. The book's french is also littered with errors so egregious that most think they could only have been intentional [1]. [1] https://ask.metafilter.com/116066/French-language-in-Infinite-jest https://ask.metafilter.com/116066/French-language-in-Infinit...
- A_D_E_P_T 1y agoDFW 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 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 Finitist when it comes to mathematics, and I view Cantor's hierarchy of infinities as... well... schizo at best.
- lacker 1y agoPersonally 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 mathematics. 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. All of these "errors" are just the author passing over a point in less detail than you would want from a text on set theory. I thought it was great, and for anyone who enjoys both set theory and Infinite Jest, I would strongly recommend the book. I understand that some people don't like it, but it should be viewed as "controversial" rather than "everyone agrees that it's riddled with errors".
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago> "He incorrectly suggests that the axiom of choice is used for Cantor's diagonal argument" 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?
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- neuroelectron 1y agoHas 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).
- dilap 1y agoYeah 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.
- Boogie_Man 1y ago[flagged]
- dilap 1y agowhite, probably, though i don't think ever explicitly stated. "incandenza" as a last name is vaguely italian sounding. why the question, tho?
- Boogie_Man 1y ago[flagged]
- kolbe 1y agoCool. We care. Keep talking.
- rurp 1y agoI totally agree, IJ might be the single most disappointing book I've read given the extreme hype around it. The writing style felt very self-indulgent and annoying. The funny/clever parts rarely seemed amusing to me. Enough people say they love the book that it's probably just a style thing that didn't click for me, but I regret how much time I spent slogging through the book and never bothered to finish it.
- ProllyInfamous 1y agoDavid Foster Wallace & David Sedaris are both "consummable media" in that they're pleasurable to read... but you walk away from their material and just feel empty (except for esoteric connections you might've woven into your own storyline). With any expert technical knowledge, you'll quickly know that Wallace wasn't any expert. I've only read Infinite Jest once, and would have edited it differently myself — but the scenes on addiction are powerful, stressful, and accurate (as somebody over a decade california clean). Pale King is better prose, but in both cases DFW isn't a "complete" author — he expects too much from his readers. At least in Sedaris' case, he keeps his prose brief =D
- BlazeNova 1y ago[dead]
- nneonneo 1y agoMathematically, the odds of getting exactly N heads after flipping a fair coin 2N times is surprisingly high - it asymptotically approaches 1/sqrt(pi * N) as N becomes large. For the problem in IJ, this comes out to 1/(3.14 * 54) which is 0.076776 - not far from the exact value of 0.076599. As another example, if you flip a fair coin 1000 times, you’ll get exactly 500 heads about 2.5% of the time. The proof is also similarly easy: it’s a straightforward application of Stirling’s approximation to the formula (2N!)/(N!*N!)/2^(2N).