Before we find intelligent civilizations, we'll find their ruins. Before we find their ruins, we'll find alien flora and fauna. Before that it'll be microbes. Life is so genuinely hard to make and maintain in the cosmos, but it's so vast and ancient that I can't believe they don't exist. We are just very fucking far away from them and by the time we get there they're probably long gone. I imagine the same will be true of any intelligent space faring species that finds Pioneer or Voyager provided they don't get destroyed by asteroids, stars, or a black hole. In any case, our eyes shouldn't be out there but here. We can't possibly hope to master the stars when we're arguing over pigmentation and economic models