I guess my point is that I don’t think there’s actually much of a paradox to be has here. Space is extremely big, and for most types of communication and transport, there’s no reason to even start with us being able to see or hear anything. If travel to the nearest star is measured in years at speeds that don’t need eye-watering amounts of energy, weird matter, etc. there’s no reason to even start looking for aliens. It would be like Native Americans in 1300 using their best technology to look for humans in Europe and formulating lots of theories about why they never see anything to indicate intelligent life in Europe. They probably are out there, not even hiding, just that in 1300 nobody could possibly cross the ocean and they weren’t really trying to communicate across the Atlantic.

The Fermi paradox only matters because it’s an easy way to fleece money out of the scifi nerds who believe that Star Trek represents a realistic future in space. It’s why the people running NASA and SETI and other similar agencies have an operating budget despite doing nothing other than being make-work projects for nerds. I don’t expect to see humans on Mars as anything other than a photo opportunity in this century and maybe the next.

I just mostly find the theory-making amusing. Maybe they’re hiding? Maybe they’re using super-secret technology. Maybe they’ve gone into a higher levels of being and aren’t physical anymore. Maybe they’ve gone Borg, maybe the Grey goo got them. It’s just anything to avoid dealing with the obvious— space is simply too big for aliens or us to effectively colonize or control and thus communicate that crosses tge nearest heliopause is unnecessary.