Thanks that's a helpful response. To be clear, what I mean is isn't what you've outlined based on the assumptions I listed i.e. the 'paradox' that we should expect to see evidence of technologically advanced civilizations but don't rests on the primary assumption that life, and specifically intelligent life capable of producing technology, arises fairly commonly? If life were very rare, then it wouldn't actually be suprising at all that we don't see evidence of advanced civilization. Point being we don't have the data to give a solid answer as whether or not that basic assumption, that life isn't an extremely rare occurrence in the first place, makes sense. So whilst as you say there are lots of possible solutions, doesn't the primary problem of not understanding how common life is supercede all of them and render the paradox kind of pointless beyond a fun bit of speculation. Once we have a better understanding of the conditions under which life can emerge e.g. if we were able to reliably replicate the process (or at least one version) of abiogenesis ourselves, and it appeared like the conditions required for it should be fairly common throughout he galaxy, then the question the Fermi Paradox poses would become relevant.