what if the reason we can't make contact with extra-terrestrials is that we're in some kind of a system that treats us as an infection, and we simply haven't been treated yet?

what if it doesn't even know we exist, yet? what kind of depths would we need to penetrate to set off a reaction?

see, this is why cosmological theories don't impress me. i'm not really looking for a technical argument right now, but all these broadly unjustifiable assumptions just mask the limitlessness of the actual possibilities. nothing we think we understand about the universe makes sense unless we assume it's a closed system. but, i think we have more reasons to think it's open, and then the entire concept of the universe collapses - on the basis of reversing a single, tiny and mostly unrealized but absolutely vital and yet entirely baseless assumption.