> What's your favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox?

A combination of things: intelligence is exceedingly rare, space is huge, and FTL travel is not actually possible. There's also the strong possibility that civilizations are likely to end up destroying themselves before becoming interplanetary.

Consider the fact that despite how long life has existed on Earth, that we're the only intelligent species. Sure, some other animals seem to be able to understand cause-and-effect, can solve some puzzles, and even use tools, but none have evolved a true language beyond basic signals (ie, "predator here", "food there"), which is basically a necessity to begin a scientific method of discovery.

On a cosmic scale, humans have only existed for the blink of an eye. We only began transmitting radio signals less than a 150 years ago, and in the next 150 years, there's a chance we end up killing ourselves, whether by destroying our atmosphere by climate change, or someone truly psychotic gets put in charge of enough nuclear weaponry.

If a planet only has radio-transmitting life for a few hundred years, then the likelihood of us being here to receive the transmissions of another civilization are statistically zero.