20 light years may as well be 2 million, at our tech level it would takes hundreds of thousands of years to get a probe or ship there. Voyager 1 probe would take take 76,000 years to reach Proxima B. If the probe could be made as fast as Helios 2, it would take 19,000 years.. and that’s 4.5 light years distance.
But we here on earth still have a rocket ship mentality.
The search for life outside earth is two sided. Other advanced civilizations could have mastered interstellar travel hundreds of millions of years ago.
We are so primitive here on earth, after what 200,000 years or whatever number humans have been on earth, humans still haven't even traveled to our closest neighbor planet.
That's pretty damn primitive by any description.