@MBrouwer I lean towards the mundane wrt the Fermi paradox. We humans, as advanced as we might make ourselves out to be, are the only type of "advanced" species on the planet capable/curious of communicating with extra terrestrial life, and are not quite sure yet if there's life elsewhere in our own solar system

If we're "typical", whatever the probability of that might be, it's no wonder we haven't found the other civilizations yet

The super advanced civilization with dyson spheres and what not is, basically, just sci fi... we don't really know how feasible such things are, so it's a bit premature IMO to ponder their absences

IOW, I'm hedging my bets on the fact that things are just too far apart, and there's simply not enough resources... in addition, we're not really in that great of a place to fill in some key drake equation parameters anyway

Let's find life on Mars first... then we can readjust :)

Sample sizes of 1 are just too small for me