That's precisely why I don't believe there is any interesting intelligent life out there, at least in our neck of the woods (the Milky Way). Mostly the time aspect. The galaxy is big, but not so big that it would take more than 200 million years to send a von-neumann probe to every star. The galaxy itself is only slightly younger than the universe, over 10 billion years. In all that time not a single intelligence has arisen and advanced just a bit beyond our level to at least start a mapping project, let alone anything like megascale structures and other projects we would expect instrumental convergence on? That only makes sense to me if we live in a mostly dead galaxy that has always been mostly dead (whether the filter is ahead or behind us makes little difference apart from judging our own prospects), or if we're so deluded about the nature of reality that we might as well say God has tricked us into thinking we're alone until we're spiritually ready or whatever.