I'm a fan of the early universe explanation. Even by our most modest estimates from what we know we are likely in the very early like <5% of the time the unive

I'm a fan of the early universe explanation. Even by our most modest estimates from what we know we are likely in the very early like <5% of the time the universe will exist before heat death/rip/collapse. It might just be that if any life is out there it is still roughly at the same place as us technologically. Especially since even modest estimates of a von Neumann self replicating device takeover suggest that if they were out there we would have seen them by now. Also I find the drake equastion estimates to be incredibly generous in most places that it is used. It often has very high estimates for inhabitable planets. Since we only know of one such planet anything over zero in that equation is basically wild speculation. Once you put one or zero for average inhabitable planets the drake equation gets depressing.