Our Life is What We Pay Attention To

When our attention is lured, herded, and commandeered in such a way, our full human potential is profoundly subverted. “Our life experience,” William James once said, “will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default.” We become what we attend to — nothing more, nothing less. A steady and exclusive stream of reality TV, entertainment gossip, social media chatter, and “breaking news” about the latest celebrity scandal or Trump’s most recent tweets — all...

 Hollywood's Anti Science

"REALITY ENDS HERE." IT'S THE UNOFFICIAL MOTTO OF THE UNIVERSITY OF Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, cast in concrete at the entranceway to the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts and, in Latin, at the South entryway of a new complex building. As scientist-turned-filmmaker and use film school graduate s Randy Olson explained to us, the slogan: is not a joke. It's a bold, challenging statement—r-a basic "screw you" to the outside world who thinks that accuracy and reality ...