How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

by Jordan Ellenberg

Christians and obey the forms of piety, until, just by force of propinquity, you start to truly believe. Can I put Pascal’s argument in modern terms better than David Foster Wallace did in Infinite Jest? I cannot. The desperate, newly sober White Flaggers are always encouraged to invoke and pay empty lip-service to slogans they don’t yet understand or believe—e.g. “Easy Does It!” and “Turn It Over!” and “One Day at a Time!” It’s called “Fake It Till You Make It,” itself an oft-invoked slogan. Everyone on a Commitment who gets up publicly to speak starts out saying he’s an alcoholic, says it whether he believes he is yet or not; then everybody up there says how Grateful he is to be sober today and how great it is to be Active and out on a Commitment with his Group, even if he’s not grateful or pleased about it at all. You’re encouraged to keep saying stuff like this until you start to believe it, just like if you ask somebody with serious sober time how long you’ll have to keep schlepping to all these goddamn meetings he’ll smile that infuriating smile and tell you just until you start to want to go to all these goddamn meetings.