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Peli Grietzer: A Mathematized Philosophy of Literature
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Peli Grietzer: A Mathematized Philosophy of Literature

On understanding literature and the experience of art using ideas from machine learning.

In episode 83 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peli Grietzer.

Peli is a scholar whose work borrows mathematical ideas from machine learning theory to think through “ambient” and ineffable phenomena like moods, vibes, cultural logics, and structures of feeling. He is working on a book titled Big Mood: A Transcendental-Computational Essay in Art and contributes to the experimental literature collective Gauss PDF. Peli has a PhD in mathematically informed literary theory from Harvard Comparative Literature in collaboration with the HUJI Einstein Institute of Mathematics.

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Outline:

  • (00:00) Intro

  • (02:17) Peli’s background

  • (10:40) Daniel takes 2 entire minutes to ask how Peli thinks about ~ Art ~

  • (26:10) Idealism and art as revealing the nature of reality, extralinguistic experiences of truth through literature

  • (52:05) The autoencoder as a way to understand Romantic theories of art

  • (1:14:55) More on how Peli thinks about autoencoders

  • (1:18:05) Connections to ambient meaning, stimmung/mood

  • (1:37:18) Examples of poetry/literature as mathematical experience, aesthetic unity and totalizing worldviews

  • (1:51:15) Moods clashing within a single work

  • (2:10:14) Modernist writers

  • (2:32:46) Outro

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The Gradient
The Gradient: Perspectives on AI
Deeply researched, technical interviews with experts thinking about AI and technology.