# Fear Has a Very Selective Imagination by Bryant McGill > “The anti-AI imagination is strangely impoverished because it can vividly imagine every machine-generated catastrophe yet becomes almost completely incapable of imagining machine-assisted breakthroughs. It sees the synthetic pathogen but somehow not the synthetic antibody, the autonomous weapon but not autonomous defense, the malign mutation but not accelerated drug discovery. Fear has a very selective imagination.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile, September 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Author-supplied exact original:** “The anti-AI imagination is strangely impoverished because it can vividly imagine every machine-generated catastrophe yet becomes almost completely incapable of imagining machine-assisted breakthroughs. It sees the synthetic pathogen but somehow not the synthetic antibody, the autonomous weapon but not autonomous defense, the malign mutation but not accelerated drug discovery. Fear has a very selective imagination.” — supplied directly by Bryant McGill for [[articles/The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile|The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile]]. - **Source article:** [[articles/The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile|The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile]] — Bryant McGill identifies this article as the originating publication for this Reminder. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/AI-Science Doomers and Anti-Science Doomers|AI-Science Doomers and Anti-Science Doomers]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile|The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/AI-Science Doomers and Anti-Science Doomers|AI-Science Doomers and Anti-Science Doomers]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/AI-Science Doomers and Anti-Science Doomers|AI-Science Doomers and Anti-Science Doomers]] - [[wiki/Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] - [[wiki/AI Safety|AI Safety]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The anti-AI imagination is strangely impoverished because it can vividly imagine every machine-generated catastrophe yet becomes almost completely incapable of imagining machine-assisted breakthroughs. It sees the synthetic pathogen but somehow not the synthetic antibody, the autonomous weapon but not autonomous defense, the malign mutation but not accelerated drug discovery. Fear has a very selective imagination.” — Bryant McGill, The End Is Near — AI Doom, Anti-Science Panic, and the Primates Who Sell Technological Exile, September 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-bryant-mcgill-fear-has-a-very-selective-imagination ```