No answer to the Fermi Paradox works if it requires all aliens to uniformly come to the same end state or satisfy some boundary condition without exception. All it takes is the one exception, one small group in one suitably advanced civilization, and you have self-replicating probes building an expanding wave of computronium, dismantling even the stars themselves as soon as the economics favor a better use for that matter. Such as more computronium.<p>The Fermi Paradox is more the Wilderness Paradox: why is everything, everywhere we look, wild and unmodified? Why are there still stars, when a simple economic analysis of our future tells us that we will tear them down in favor of more efficient arrangements of matter and energy?<p><a href="https://www.exratione.com/2015/05/the-cosmological-noocene/" rel="nofollow">https://www.exratione.com/2015/05/the-cosmological-noocene/</a><p>"Per our present understanding of physics and intelligent economic activity, we will turn every part of the great span of the universe into our descendants if not diverted or stopped by some outside influence, stars and all. The cosmological noocene, an ocean of intelligence. That the natural universe remains present to be used by us indicates that something is awry, however, that some vital and important understanding is missing, and as a species we are still just making the first fumbling explorations of the bounds of the possible with regards to what it is that we don't know."