I’ve got a theory on the fermi paradox stuff I need to flesh out (and research, am assuming this isn’t original), among like a dozen other things I’ve been meaning to expand on that I haven’t: I think we severely underestimate how much we’re optimized to see what’s proximal to us.

I think there’s a strong possibility there may be “gray goo” all over the place, beings far bigger than us we’re inside of, physics that sits “parallel” to ours in whatever you’d call “space” in some construction we can’t comprehend, etc.

In short, I think the universe seems empty precisely because it’s distant, both evolutionarily and in terms of physical space.

Donald Hoffman’s been talking about a lot of stuff pointing in this direction.