"Throw in many other things like the fact we've not detected life off-world,"
I do consider the simulation hypothesis to be one of the answers to the Fermi paradox, because "not deeply simulating the observable universe" is definitely another one of those obvious ways of cutting the load exponentially. Again, lots of attention to detail; if the external universe is something other than a full QM-level (or true ToE-level) simulation, it's obviously running on one heck of a detailed model... but it could still be exponentially less detailed than it superficially seems to be.
Of course, even if we are an island of advanced simulation, there could be others out there, surrounded by much-lower-detail areas.
I do consider the simulation hypothesis to be one of the answers to the Fermi paradox, because "not deeply simulating the observable universe" is definitely another one of those obvious ways of cutting the load exponentially. Again, lots of attention to detail; if the external universe is something other than a full QM-level (or true ToE-level) simulation, it's obviously running on one heck of a detailed model... but it could still be exponentially less detailed than it superficially seems to be.
Of course, even if we are an island of advanced simulation, there could be others out there, surrounded by much-lower-detail areas.