5 ms·

Two Ways to Draw Infinite Jest's Sierpinski Gasket

52 points by chiply 4mo ago

chiply 4mo ago
"David Foster Wallace (DFW) designed Infinite Jest as a Sierpinski Gasket using the classical top-down construction, placing three institutional vertices (ETA, Ennet House, the Wheelchair Assassins) and subdividing the structure at many scales below. Readers, on each reread, fill in the same Gasket using the chaos game, a non-sequential sampling that converges on the Sierpinski Gasket over many iterations. This explains why first readings feel like noise (burn-in), why the entry point doesn't matter, and why the book rewards near-infinite rereading. Although the book is naturally finite, the Gasket built over it by the reader is infinite."
- LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
  Is this an AI summary though?
ofalkaed 4mo ago
Using the three plots of Infinite Jest as the vertices doesn't really work, there is nothing fractal like about the plot itself and plot is not the structure. How I see it is that the vertices would be family, education, and society, which are all deeply interrelated. For the majority of the characters we learn their relation to these three things, in Hal and Gately we get a very well developed view of it, not so much for Marathe and Steeply where the family and education aspect is abbreviated and I think this is where the mentioned mercy cuts happened. I don't think I would say Infinite Jest has three plots, it feels like it does because the plot never happens, we get the setup and then it is dropped right when it actually starts. We can view it as three plots but those plots don't provide anything useful towards understanding. They would be more accurately viewed as triangles, they are containers for information. Edit: I also don't think we can fully interpret Infinite Jest through the Sierpinski structure, that was the structure of the first draft which was something like 500 pages longer and had the bulk of the novel in the end notes. It has been too long since I last read it to say what the structure of the final form of the novel is but I think he may have just made the gasket more linear; he keeps repeating the full triangle but each time he goes a bit deeper with the iterations.
- chiply 4mo ago
  Ah, maybe I made my claim unclear. So my claim is that the 3 vertices are the institutions (ETA, Ennet House, the Wheelchair Assassins), not plots. I agree that IJ is kind of plotless, and that to me is what the voids in the Sierpinski Gasket could represent, but this article was more about the two-ways-to-construct-the-triangle thing. But I like your vertices (family, education, and society). You're making me think that there's something to the fact that you could 'seed' the Gasket with different vertices as well. Something I learn when re-reading is that you can bring so many interpretations and perspectives to this novel and still come out with an entertaining and valid experience of it. In that respect, I like the idea that you can use different triplets to seed the Gasket! You're correct that we can't lean fully on the Sierpinski idea. Wallace mentions in his interview that after those edits, the book became more like a 'lopsided' Sierpinski Gasket "it looks basically like a pyramid on acid" (https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-infinite-jest https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...). Separate from the Gasket thing, but I like your point about the footnotes. I wish people spent more time on those. I've heard commentary on the structure of those. Some folks talk about the 'self referentiality', as text (obviously) references footnotes, and there are even instances of footnotes referencing the main text! I've also heard that the back-and-forth emulates the back-and-forth in a tennis match, although that one seems less interesting. Edits: fixed spelling mistakes Edit: I added your 3 vertices idea and the fact you can invert the 3 vertices to the post, thank you! I attributed back to this thread.
  - ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
    I've tried three times to read it and got a few pages in before giving up on it. Would it make more sense to just dive into the middle and see what converges out then? What put me off it is it just kind of reads like a rambling stoner conversation.
    - chiply 4mo ago
      "rambling stoner conversation". Lol, you've clearly made it to Ken Erdedy's section, which is literally that. That's a brief passage in the book, and honestly one of the hardest parts to read. I'd say there's a lot of groundwork laid in the first 60 - 100 pages or so. After that, I honestly don't think it would be harmful to cherry pick interesting passages from the book. You could research interesting sections of the novel and target those for a first pass read through, then maybe later read it sequentially. There aren't really plot spoilers as the book is somewhat plotless. Even still, I'd recommend the first read through be sequential. My first read through was, but I also skipped around a little bit. My favourite thing about DFW is his writing style. Also might help to whet your appetite for his voice by reading something like "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", which is a hilarious anecdote and commentary about his trip aboard a cruise liner. In general, I'd say the best advice is to free yourself from the burden of 'understanding' the novel on your first read through and just enjoy the chaos. Besides, there is so much ambiguity in the novel that, even if you do crystallize some understanding, there's likely many alternative interpretations. That's where the re-reads get really fun.
LeoPanthera 4mo ago
This feels very LLM. It has the shape of sense but doesn't actually make any coherent points, other than "how to draw the Sierpiński triangle". It even has some non-sensical AI diagrams to finish it off.
- chiply 4mo ago
  I wrote this. If you ask an LLM what to make of IJ as a Sierpinski Gasket, it doesn't yield anything too interesting (it mainly talks about the voids representing the absence of plot points / missing characters). As far as I know the two-ways angle is novel. The only AI piece is the banner image, because I can't draw. All other images are attributed (Wikipedia, YouTube). I got the idea for this post after listening to Wallace's interview with bookworm (linked in the post), and subsequently researching Sierpinski Gaskets on YouTube (where I saw the Numberphile and ViralHog videos).
  - LeoPanthera 4mo ago
    For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have commented without the AI image. I just tend to assume that articles with AI graphics also have AI text. That assumption is almost never wrong.
    - chiply 4mo ago
      This is a good point. The banner image is something I've been doing on all my articles, and it's creating the wrong perception. I'm probably going to stop adding these. All my other content is software engineering related, and I've started adding more visual content like diagrams, screenshots, and YouTube videos. So I probably don't need to lean on the banner images anymore, and it seems like they're doing more harm than good! Edit: I actually went ahead and removed the banner image from this post. Thank you for pointing out this signal!
      - endymion-light 4mo ago
        Yeah agreed - Just as a future context I tend to close out of articles quickly if they have an AI generated image. Highly reccomend something like Unsplash or Comsos.so - They both have some brilliant visuals, especially public.work - cosmos.so/public-work Even old archives are great to search for visuals and shows the passion that you've put in to the writing.
eps 4mo ago
Apparently, Infinite Jest is a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest
- ta8903 4mo ago
  Apparently, a book is a bunch of text on pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- abrookewood 4mo ago
  One that is almost universally praised, but which I have been unable to finish.
  - altmanaltman 4mo ago
    I think a lot of what "universal praise" means is just peer pressure and people making their Identity fully around the art they consume. A lot of it is also marketing and pushing tastes into culture. A key part of how to see if someone is just parotting acceptable opinions vrs is actually having an opinion, is to make them explain it. If its a generic "oh you need to read it, its great" or parotting of popular talking points, that person is not serious about their taste. They use the art as an ornament to make their personalities more interesting than actually engaging with the art in any meaningful way. The only reaction that matters should be your personal one and what resonates with you.
    - jnovek 4mo ago
      This might be survivorship bias, the people who read and enjoy a difficult book for the sake of it probably don’t need social media validation to do so.
      - 4mo ago
jpfromlondon 4mo ago
I wish to read this but I'm on page 600 of my first pass of the book and worry it'll spoil it for me. At risk of marking myself a "lit-bro" I think the book is proving solidly prophetic.
- chiply 4mo ago
  So in general, I'd say there's maybe 1-2 spoilers, but nothing major. If you want truly 0 spoilage, I wouldn't read it, but if you can tolerate some very minor stuff, you're likely safe. If you're on page 600 though, there's no spoilers. Edit: and yes, DFW presaged a lot with this book! Especially around how entertainment has evolved and the negative impact it has. The 'doom scroll' feature is literally called 'infinite scroll' in the software industry. Scary stuff :-/
  - jpfromlondon 4mo ago
    I had already been cutting screen-time, my phone especially which no longer leaves the house with me. It's pure coincidence too as I read TPK in January and knew I had to read more DFW fiction as soon as I could.
- achenet 4mo ago
  Solidly prophetic? Er, it kind of predicts the internet, but everything else? Quebec separatism? Corporate sponsored calendar? All of North America under the same flag? Dumping toxic waste in/on Québec instead of Africa ? none of things actually happened
  - nephihaha 4mo ago
    Don't forget the giant hamsters and wheelchair assassins. Two of these things were already on the go. Or kind of... The Québec independence movement has been mainstream for a long while and is fairly successful despite attempts to scupper it, such as installing completely bilingual prime ministers etc. Maybe one day it will reach its ultimate goal. The "sponsored calendar" is probably Wallace's parody of various dedicated years, days and months we have. We do have World Mental Health Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride Month, the International Year of Whatever. We had a "Year of Gaelic" in Scotland which I only heard about half way in. The difference being that these are not generally purely advertising initiatives, although many corporations have tried to hijack them.
casi 4mo ago
I enjoyed this article, i still never finished infinite jest as much as id like to. but this idea of burn-in is really interesting as a way to present ideas. I guess ill try again ha
- chiply 4mo ago
  As a rule-of-thumb, I'd say if you've made it past the introduction of each vertex I describe in the article (Ennet, ETA, Wheelchair assassins), you're good to bounce around and play the chaos game in that way. Put another way, if you know Hal, Gately, and Marathe/Steeply; then I'd say you're good to hop around. Even still, I strongly recommend reading it sequentially. But my first read through, I did skip ahead to some interesting passages other folks had written about, and that re-invigorated my interest in the novel. DFW's voice is so idiosyncratic and interesting. That's what kept me coming back.
iammjm 4mo ago
> Three primary settings, three institutions, and three cults of surrender: discipline (ETA), substance (Ennet), ideology (AFR). I don't think substance is right: I think it's about freedom from it, or maybe a "higher power" of some sorts, mysticism maybe. I think it makes more sense, also in the context of what Wallace said elsewhere ("This Is Water"): "Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.(...)"
- chiply 4mo ago
  Ah this is a good catch! I think "higher power" would fit way better given how I framed this sentence. Ennet's members aren't surrendering to substance (they've already done that). Like you said, once in the halfway house, they're surrendering to the "higher power". AA groups, as the book covers, are conspicuously religious, and I know a lot of the AA passages were informed by DFW's research at AA meetings and his own experience in recovery. I'm going to change this line.
  - iammjm 4mo ago
    By the way, I really liked your article! I love Infinite Jest and I also have a thing for Sierpinski Triangles; first time I heard about them was from Robert Anton Wilson. Last year I even linoprinted christmas cards with simple christmas trees made from sierpinski triangles for my family and friends! Also: do you know https://samizdat.co/digest/ https://samizdat.co/digest/? Looks like an interesting project which ties nicely into your idea
    - chiply 4mo ago
      Sierpinski Christmas cards is next level! Whoa, that site is beautiful! Thank you for sharing that, I'm going to be having a lot of fun with this today!
janvdberg 4mo ago
Awesome to find DFW content on HN! Love this piece! I will surely blog about it on davidfosterwallace.nl in the coming weeks (it'll be in Dutch though).
- chiply 4mo ago
  Oh thanks! That'll be great to see :). Edit: feel free to drop a link here or send to me when it's ready, I'd love to read it! My contact info is in my blog!

52 points by chiply 4mo ago

"David Foster Wallace (DFW) designed Infinite Jest as a Sierpinski Gasket using the classical top-down construction, placing three institutional vertices (ETA, Ennet House, the Wheelchair Assassins) and subdividing the structure at many scales below. Readers, on each reread, fill in the same Gasket using the chaos game, a non-sequential sampling that converges on the Sierpinski Gasket over many iterations. This explains why first readings feel like noise (burn-in), why the entry point doesn't matter, and why the book rewards near-infinite rereading. Although the book is naturally finite, the Gasket built over it by the reader is infinite."

LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
Is this an AI summary though?

ofalkaed 4mo ago

Using the three plots of Infinite Jest as the vertices doesn't really work, there is nothing fractal like about the plot itself and plot is not the structure. How I see it is that the vertices would be family, education, and society, which are all deeply interrelated. For the majority of the characters we learn their relation to these three things, in Hal and Gately we get a very well developed view of it, not so much for Marathe and Steeply where the family and education aspect is abbreviated and I think this is where the mentioned mercy cuts happened. I don't think I would say Infinite Jest has three plots, it feels like it does because the plot never happens, we get the setup and then it is dropped right when it actually starts. We can view it as three plots but those plots don't provide anything useful towards understanding. They would be more accurately viewed as triangles, they are containers for information. Edit: I also don't think we can fully interpret Infinite Jest through the Sierpinski structure, that was the structure of the first draft which was something like 500 pages longer and had the bulk of the novel in the end notes. It has been too long since I last read it to say what the structure of the final form of the novel is but I think he may have just made the gasket more linear; he keeps repeating the full triangle but each time he goes a bit deeper with the iterations.

chiply 4mo ago
Ah, maybe I made my claim unclear. So my claim is that the 3 vertices are the institutions (ETA, Ennet House, the Wheelchair Assassins), not plots. I agree that IJ is kind of plotless, and that to me is what the voids in the Sierpinski Gasket could represent, but this article was more about the two-ways-to-construct-the-triangle thing. But I like your vertices (family, education, and society). You're making me think that there's something to the fact that you could 'seed' the Gasket with different vertices as well. Something I learn when re-reading is that you can bring so many interpretations and perspectives to this novel and still come out with an entertaining and valid experience of it. In that respect, I like the idea that you can use different triplets to seed the Gasket! You're correct that we can't lean fully on the Sierpinski idea. Wallace mentions in his interview that after those edits, the book became more like a 'lopsided' Sierpinski Gasket "it looks basically like a pyramid on acid" (https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-infinite-jest https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...). Separate from the Gasket thing, but I like your point about the footnotes. I wish people spent more time on those. I've heard commentary on the structure of those. Some folks talk about the 'self referentiality', as text (obviously) references footnotes, and there are even instances of footnotes referencing the main text! I've also heard that the back-and-forth emulates the back-and-forth in a tennis match, although that one seems less interesting. Edits: fixed spelling mistakes Edit: I added your 3 vertices idea and the fact you can invert the 3 vertices to the post, thank you! I attributed back to this thread.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
  I've tried three times to read it and got a few pages in before giving up on it. Would it make more sense to just dive into the middle and see what converges out then? What put me off it is it just kind of reads like a rambling stoner conversation.
  - chiply 4mo ago
    "rambling stoner conversation". Lol, you've clearly made it to Ken Erdedy's section, which is literally that. That's a brief passage in the book, and honestly one of the hardest parts to read. I'd say there's a lot of groundwork laid in the first 60 - 100 pages or so. After that, I honestly don't think it would be harmful to cherry pick interesting passages from the book. You could research interesting sections of the novel and target those for a first pass read through, then maybe later read it sequentially. There aren't really plot spoilers as the book is somewhat plotless. Even still, I'd recommend the first read through be sequential. My first read through was, but I also skipped around a little bit. My favourite thing about DFW is his writing style. Also might help to whet your appetite for his voice by reading something like "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", which is a hilarious anecdote and commentary about his trip aboard a cruise liner. In general, I'd say the best advice is to free yourself from the burden of 'understanding' the novel on your first read through and just enjoy the chaos. Besides, there is so much ambiguity in the novel that, even if you do crystallize some understanding, there's likely many alternative interpretations. That's where the re-reads get really fun.

LeoPanthera 4mo ago

This feels very LLM. It has the shape of sense but doesn't actually make any coherent points, other than "how to draw the Sierpiński triangle". It even has some non-sensical AI diagrams to finish it off.

chiply 4mo ago
I wrote this. If you ask an LLM what to make of IJ as a Sierpinski Gasket, it doesn't yield anything too interesting (it mainly talks about the voids representing the absence of plot points / missing characters). As far as I know the two-ways angle is novel. The only AI piece is the banner image, because I can't draw. All other images are attributed (Wikipedia, YouTube). I got the idea for this post after listening to Wallace's interview with bookworm (linked in the post), and subsequently researching Sierpinski Gaskets on YouTube (where I saw the Numberphile and ViralHog videos).
- LeoPanthera 4mo ago
  For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have commented without the AI image. I just tend to assume that articles with AI graphics also have AI text. That assumption is almost never wrong.
  - chiply 4mo ago
    This is a good point. The banner image is something I've been doing on all my articles, and it's creating the wrong perception. I'm probably going to stop adding these. All my other content is software engineering related, and I've started adding more visual content like diagrams, screenshots, and YouTube videos. So I probably don't need to lean on the banner images anymore, and it seems like they're doing more harm than good! Edit: I actually went ahead and removed the banner image from this post. Thank you for pointing out this signal!
    - endymion-light 4mo ago
      Yeah agreed - Just as a future context I tend to close out of articles quickly if they have an AI generated image. Highly reccomend something like Unsplash or Comsos.so - They both have some brilliant visuals, especially public.work - cosmos.so/public-work Even old archives are great to search for visuals and shows the passion that you've put in to the writing.

eps 4mo ago

Apparently, Infinite Jest is a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest

ta8903 4mo ago
Apparently, a book is a bunch of text on pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
abrookewood 4mo ago
One that is almost universally praised, but which I have been unable to finish.
- altmanaltman 4mo ago
  I think a lot of what "universal praise" means is just peer pressure and people making their Identity fully around the art they consume. A lot of it is also marketing and pushing tastes into culture. A key part of how to see if someone is just parotting acceptable opinions vrs is actually having an opinion, is to make them explain it. If its a generic "oh you need to read it, its great" or parotting of popular talking points, that person is not serious about their taste. They use the art as an ornament to make their personalities more interesting than actually engaging with the art in any meaningful way. The only reaction that matters should be your personal one and what resonates with you.
  - jnovek 4mo ago
    This might be survivorship bias, the people who read and enjoy a difficult book for the sake of it probably don’t need social media validation to do so.
    - 4mo ago

jpfromlondon 4mo ago

I wish to read this but I'm on page 600 of my first pass of the book and worry it'll spoil it for me. At risk of marking myself a "lit-bro" I think the book is proving solidly prophetic.

chiply 4mo ago
So in general, I'd say there's maybe 1-2 spoilers, but nothing major. If you want truly 0 spoilage, I wouldn't read it, but if you can tolerate some very minor stuff, you're likely safe. If you're on page 600 though, there's no spoilers. Edit: and yes, DFW presaged a lot with this book! Especially around how entertainment has evolved and the negative impact it has. The 'doom scroll' feature is literally called 'infinite scroll' in the software industry. Scary stuff :-/
- jpfromlondon 4mo ago
  I had already been cutting screen-time, my phone especially which no longer leaves the house with me. It's pure coincidence too as I read TPK in January and knew I had to read more DFW fiction as soon as I could.
achenet 4mo ago
Solidly prophetic? Er, it kind of predicts the internet, but everything else? Quebec separatism? Corporate sponsored calendar? All of North America under the same flag? Dumping toxic waste in/on Québec instead of Africa ? none of things actually happened
- nephihaha 4mo ago
  Don't forget the giant hamsters and wheelchair assassins. Two of these things were already on the go. Or kind of... The Québec independence movement has been mainstream for a long while and is fairly successful despite attempts to scupper it, such as installing completely bilingual prime ministers etc. Maybe one day it will reach its ultimate goal. The "sponsored calendar" is probably Wallace's parody of various dedicated years, days and months we have. We do have World Mental Health Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride Month, the International Year of Whatever. We had a "Year of Gaelic" in Scotland which I only heard about half way in. The difference being that these are not generally purely advertising initiatives, although many corporations have tried to hijack them.

casi 4mo ago

I enjoyed this article, i still never finished infinite jest as much as id like to. but this idea of burn-in is really interesting as a way to present ideas. I guess ill try again ha

chiply 4mo ago
As a rule-of-thumb, I'd say if you've made it past the introduction of each vertex I describe in the article (Ennet, ETA, Wheelchair assassins), you're good to bounce around and play the chaos game in that way. Put another way, if you know Hal, Gately, and Marathe/Steeply; then I'd say you're good to hop around. Even still, I strongly recommend reading it sequentially. But my first read through, I did skip ahead to some interesting passages other folks had written about, and that re-invigorated my interest in the novel. DFW's voice is so idiosyncratic and interesting. That's what kept me coming back.

iammjm 4mo ago

> Three primary settings, three institutions, and three cults of surrender: discipline (ETA), substance (Ennet), ideology (AFR). I don't think substance is right: I think it's about freedom from it, or maybe a "higher power" of some sorts, mysticism maybe. I think it makes more sense, also in the context of what Wallace said elsewhere ("This Is Water"): "Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.(...)"

chiply 4mo ago
Ah this is a good catch! I think "higher power" would fit way better given how I framed this sentence. Ennet's members aren't surrendering to substance (they've already done that). Like you said, once in the halfway house, they're surrendering to the "higher power". AA groups, as the book covers, are conspicuously religious, and I know a lot of the AA passages were informed by DFW's research at AA meetings and his own experience in recovery. I'm going to change this line.
- iammjm 4mo ago
  By the way, I really liked your article! I love Infinite Jest and I also have a thing for Sierpinski Triangles; first time I heard about them was from Robert Anton Wilson. Last year I even linoprinted christmas cards with simple christmas trees made from sierpinski triangles for my family and friends! Also: do you know https://samizdat.co/digest/ https://samizdat.co/digest/? Looks like an interesting project which ties nicely into your idea
  - chiply 4mo ago
    Sierpinski Christmas cards is next level! Whoa, that site is beautiful! Thank you for sharing that, I'm going to be having a lot of fun with this today!

janvdberg 4mo ago

Awesome to find DFW content on HN! Love this piece! I will surely blog about it on davidfosterwallace.nl in the coming weeks (it'll be in Dutch though).

chiply 4mo ago
Oh thanks! That'll be great to see :). Edit: feel free to drop a link here or send to me when it's ready, I'd love to read it! My contact info is in my blog!