My personal favorite regarding Fermi’s Paradox is that if there are civilizations out there, not only do they not want to be contacted, they can’t understand why any other civilization would.
Nice guys don’t get to be top dog. Any species that manages to climb it’s way to the top of a planet’s food change and then develop a technological civilization capable of space travel is going to be aggressive, smart and potentially hostile.
That being the case, the intelligent thing to do would be listen and see if you could spot them, but do everything you could to keep them from spotting you.
Agreed. Stealth is a good thing to master.