Attention actively constitutes reality, not merely reacts to it

Evidence

THERE ARE MORE reasons to deepen attention than simply resisting the attention economy. Those reasons have to do with the very real ways in which attention-what we pay attention to and what we do not-renders our reality in a very serious sense. From the same set of “data,” we draw conclusions based on our past experiences and assumptions. In her piece on the Prejudice Lab, Nordell speaks with Evelyn R. Carter, a social psychologist at UCLA, who tells her that “people in the majority and the minority often see two different realities” based on what they do and do not notice. For example, “[w]hite people…might only hear a racist remark, while people of color might register subtler actions, like someone scooting away slightly on the bus” Thinking about the idea of rendering, I sometimes borrow from my experience with (literal, computational) rendering. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 422

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core ‘attention as world-constitution’ thesis the reader needs to name; Carter’s empirical example grounds the otherwise philosophical point in social psychology. — connects to: The brain actively generates what it expects to see, not what is actually there — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 61
• QUESTION: How does attention’s reality-constitution claim sit with the manifest-destiny/‘manifest dismantling’ move — is the reality here the same order as the imperial one Odell counters?