Abstract

One of the possible solutions of the Fermi paradox is that all civilizations go extinct because they hit some Late Great Filter. Such a universal Late Great Filter must be an unpredictable event that all civilizations unexpectedly encounter, even if they try to escape extinction. This is similar to the “Death in Damascus” paradox from decision theory. However, this unpredictable Late Great Filter could be escaped by choosing a random strategy for humanity’s future development. However, if all civilizations act randomly, this could be the actual cause of universal extinction, as no one will choose the most optimal strategy. Using a meta-random strategy, where the decision to start random actions is also made randomly, solves this.