A really simple answer to the Fermi paradox is that we're the first, or in the first wave, of intelligent species, and it's just too early for the light from th

A really simple answer to the Fermi paradox is that we're the first, or in the first wave, of intelligent species, and it's just too early for the light from the others to have reached us yet. We're not just looking into the distance, we're also looking into the past. Life is less likely the farther we look. It took a long time for the universe to create the conditions for a solar system like ours to exist in the first place, and why would have this happened so much faster elsewhere? The trend towards higher entropy/complexity is like a universal clock. The universe might look big, but our view of it is not homogeneous. We wouldn't even see ourselves if we tried to find us, unless we were a close neighbor.