Reconsidering the Fermi Paradox

The Fermi paradox is commonly framed as a tension between the apparent abundance of habitable worlds and the absence of observed extraterrestrial civilizations. Existing explanations typically appeal to contingent factors, such as biological rarity, evolutionary bottlenecks, or self-destruction. Here we argue that the paradox arises from a conceptual conflation of three distinct questions: the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, their visibility in principle, and their detectability in practice. By separating these dimensions and analyzing the physical, informational, and system-level constraints governing encounter and detection, we show that non-detection can be a generic outcome even in universes rich in intelligent life. Cosmic silence is therefore not an empirical anomaly, but a structurally expected default state under weak coupling between autonomous civilizations.