As I’m driving from my parents’ house to my apartment late at night, I start having a panic attack because I’m afraid of the anthropic principle.

Philosophy is not driving me to madness. Instead, I think everyone’s personal anxieties and delusions flow to fit the shape of their container. People more religious than I am worry about divine punishment. Physicist Ernest Rutherford supposedly worried he would fall through the empty space within atoms. I, too, am immersed in a subculture where people argue about philosophy and agree that a powerful, nearly unstoppable force is likely to upend our world someday soon.

My route home is only a few miles. I drive it a couple times a week because my parents are always inviting me for food and they let me plug in my used Chevy Volt. And, of course, because I love them. Usually the biggest obstacle driving home is a roving construction crew. So I try to convince myself that I should press on, even though I’ve only gone a couple blocks.

I have depression, anxiety, and ADHD. I’ve heard that when you have three mental health diagnoses, none of them are the real root of the problem. I don’t know if this is true. I do know that looking people in the eye is too personal and therefore scary, but I’ve managed to find an acceptable compromise where I look at the bridge of their nose. I know that when characters in a show or a book are about to get into trouble and they don’t realize it, I need to take a few minutes to collect myself before I can continue the story. I know that sometimes I pick at my keratosis pilaris bumps because they push against my skin uncomfortably, but I also pick at them when I’m stressed or just need stimulation.

This is roughly why I have panic attacks in cars at night. It is not why they are about the anthropic principle.

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The anthropic principle argues that if I am observing the universe, the universe has to be consistent with some version of me being around to observe it. This further suggests something like the doomsday argument: I should be a typical observer, and if I seem atypical then there must be some explanation.¹

Sometimes, when I’m most disconnected from reality, I can’t escape the thought that I’m a simulated person meant to typify the early 21st century. I’m a Jewish Asian-American upper/upper-middle class transgender YouTuber with a math degree from Harvard and an interest in AI safety. I must represent the early 21st century the way that the late 19th century is represented by an English lord who owns a railroad and a champion polo team before dying while leading an expedition to the Northwest Passage.

They’re probably simulating me as some kind of post-singularity historical drama, or (let’s not kid ourselves) more of a dark comedy. Or maybe I’m being simulated so I can join a jury of people from different eras to decide the course of humanity’s future.

This thought tends to dwell in my head every few weeks. It’s not an evil thought – more chaotic neutral. It’s not the thought’s fault that I’m detaching from my world. The thought is just a symptom. I still don’t like when it comes.

A related thought, though perhaps a contradictory one, is that I was created by the most indecisive player on a character select menu. Gay or straight? Bi. White or person of color? Let’s go with a mix of “model minority” and “ethnic white”. Man or woman? Trans woman with a vague sense of impostor syndrome. It doesn’t help that I am the most indecisive player on a character select menu. We are made in the image of God, after all.

My least charitable variation on this thought is that people who are good at abstract thinking are the only ones who are conscious.

But this time, I’m thinking of a different response to the doomsday argument: that my current existence is necessary to enable future observers. I shouldn’t be surprised I am living an unusual life, just as I wasn’t surprised to wake up on the day of my 7th birthday; it had to happen at some point for the rest of my life to occur, so I may as well enjoy it. Maybe it’s like the story “The Egg”. This is supposed to be reassuring, but in this moment nothing is reassuring.

So it’s not the anthropic principle itself that makes me afraid while I’m in the car. Rather, I’m gripped by the fear that the singularity will happen while I’m at Inkhaven, and everyone in the Bay Area will be subsumed into the machine consciousness and all the rest of my friends and family and most of humanity will die.

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There’s a technique from dialectical behavioral therapy called “opposite action”. Sometimes, you have an emotion that’s driving you towards something self-destructive or harmful in the long term. Opposite action tells you to do two things. First, notice what that emotion is telling you to do. Then, do the exact opposite.

Opposite action is the single most helpful technique for me when I’m having a depressive episode. Unfortunately, it is also the hardest. Everything in my mind is screaming at me that getting up from the bed (or the floor) is the worst decision I could possibly make, I’m stupid to even even consider getting up, and there’s no way it can lead to anything good. Except for one quiet voice that remembers the last 20 times opposite action worked, and dutifully drags my body to a standing position singlehandedly. Anxiety is not quite the same as depression, but the principle still applies.

I make it home without crashing the car. I’d like to think it’s because I outsmarted the problem. After all, even if I am to someday be the sole survivor of my family, I have a duty to carry on their legacy. Even if my life is a bad piece of fiction, I have a duty to teach the audience about what it would have been like to be as I am and to have loved the people I love. These are my conscious responses to my existential dread, and they are good responses.

But the real way I get home is much more like opposite action. I reassure myself in a voice of false calm that the anthropic principle isn’t going to get me. For this one moment at least, I am safe. Going to a faraway city won’t make my family die.

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People tell me that overcoming anxiety and depression gets easier as time goes on. These days, I even agree with them. The first time you have to push through to the other side, it feels impossible. Now, with 21 pieces of evidence against its impossibility, it only feels nearly impossible. Maybe someday I’ll be able to bring it down to exceedingly difficult.

When my mind clears, I’ll be able to assess all this more calmly. I’ll understand that my fears will always look for a container to fill, and rationalist philosophy is just the one they found this time. In a slightly different universe, perhaps I’d be panicking about aliens or false consciousness or Ron DeSantis.² The fear that overtakes me in moments like these inherently defies logic, and should be ignored as a source of actual information.

Eventually, I make it back to my apartment, and manage to get to sleep. During the night, the noise subsides. I know it will be back, but I am still grateful for the calm intermissions.

Philosophy is not driving me to madness.

My mind drove itself to madness a long time ago, and philosophy happens to be near the parking spot.

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Coming Soon: NASA is Scott, China is Amundsen