My answer to the Fermi paradox is that the Fermi paradox is predicated on technical advances and that’s self-regulating and dampening. It is my view that organisms that are fit for their environment would inversely proportionally develop technology according to that fitness. Thus if an organism is fit then it develops very little technology (in most cases zero) but if an organism is un-fit then it must necessarily develop technology, adapt biologically within its population or go extinct.
The Fermi paradox says nothing about the origin of life but the origin of technology and to me that requires the organism to be pushed by the environment to the point of extinction. The environment change can’t be too fast to cause extinction and it can’t be too slow for natural adaptation. Consequently what the Fermi Paradox is measuring is not abiogenesis but a “biotechnogenesis”.
This dramatically reducing the odds of our detecting a technically advanced species but it doesn’t reduce the odds of any life per se.
Whilst our technology level increases dramatically the speed of light remains a constant so if the probability of biotechnogenesis is reduced then this spaces out the possible species and that gap cannot be overcome by exponential increases in technology but will always be limited to a linear function of time.
Perhaps we can quantify the probability of that narrow window whereby on one side is a stable environment that living things can naturally adapt and on the other is extinction but I don’t believe it is a matter of life plus time.