The one thing that bugs me on the surface about the Fermi Paradox is the assumption that it is possible or feasible to colonize the galaxy. The Drake equation

The one thing that bugs me on the surface about the Fermi Paradox is the assumption that it is possible or feasible to colonize the galaxy. The Drake equation stops at simply releasing detectable signals into space. The Fermi paradox assumes that interstellar travel will be cheap enough and fast enough to make traversing the galaxy a given. Yes, given a few million years, Von Neuman probes can span the galaxy. Ok. And? We, as a species, have a hard time thinking beyond a handful of years. Now we're talking about projects that have a time scales orders of magnitude in duration than anything we've even thought about doing before. I can't really get further than that on the Fermi paradox (or a couple of related ones) because I don't buy the premise to start with. Like the probability that we're in a simulation being likely. It assumes that we will have the power/understanding to simulate reality. I question that assumption. I don't think it's a given.