The problem has been always the temporal scales. But if you change that, the odds are not so bad.

If all the civilizations started more or less at the same time that us, it's not so weird that we have not found anybody else. If you add some other factor (maybe civilizations are only possible far from the center, so there is a big spread between them) the probabilities improve.

It also would mean interesting times ahead for humanity.

Of course, all this is only idle speculation.

I appreciate a good reason to think deeply as much as the next person ... but odds are just that, odds. If we were the result of some freak black swan event that kickstarted "life", the odds of it happening are irrelevant ... because it did.

To be clear, I'm not saying that's what it is ... the fermi paradox is a great thought experiment. But let's just keep things in perspective. Low odds don't mean something won't happen, just like "true random" doesn't mean the same song can't/won't play 10 times in a row ;)

The troubling thing about the Fermi paradox is that the Great Filter may still be ahead of us.

As in, the universe may be littered with the ruins of single-planet civilizations slightly ahead of our technology level. We may have observed and cataloged many such planets, failing to notice the ruins.