Imagine the universe we're in as a timeline, and that timeline splits at the point of every potentiality, and from each of those points in the timeline a new actuality takes its own course.

If you were to try to travel backwards in time, along your current timeline, you would necessarily be introducing a new timeline altogether. By going backwards, you've made an alteration, causing a retroactively separate timeline. The past has already happened and can never be re-experienced in exactly the same way, because to experience it would necessarily change it into a new timeline, you see?

Well, people usually make the argument that corporations will become the governments of the future as a way of saying that we'll become more awful because people are awful and profit is awful, and we're just going to get more awful, lol.

But governments are just corporations that have a monopoly on violence, and so they're able to collect revenue without producing anything. So I don't know that corporations who chase profits are all that much worse than the corporations that don't.

But one thing that all cooperatives within social species share is a common goal, government, corporation, or otherwise. And what we've seen with humans, and what would be seen in any successful species, are more and more efficient ways of accomplishing their shared goals.

The most pragmatic ways to solve problems are always going to win out. And what we know is that cooperation is always the most pragmatic solution. Simply put, many hands make light work.

The actual reason we've seen so much violence and exploitation throughout history isn't because we're just naturally bastards, it's because we hadn't yet developed the technologies or knowledge needed to build an infrastructure that could utilize cooperation in a more efficient way than we could with violence and exploitation.

Violence and exploitation were simply a more effective way of accomplishing our goals. But as knowledge and technology advance, we become less violent and less exploitative. This isn't because we're becoming kinder and gentler, but because cooperation is becoming more effective as technology and knowledge increase.

It only stands to reason that any species that are capable of interstellar travel will have achieved it by having better utilized cooperation, and will therefore be far more likely to seek out cooperation with other species they come in contact with than violence. Because even more hands mean even lighter work.

Is common sense the best way to approach the uncommon? Generally speaking, novel problems require novel solutions that are developed with novel approaches.

The real question is why would they allow themselves to be seen? Any information they would get from observing us would presumably be less valuable, or at least potentially less valuable, when we know that we're being observed.

And those are more easily obtainable from asteroids, where planetary geology hasn't dispersed them, and you don't have to contend with a massive gravity well.

There isn't anything that you can get from a planet with life that you can't get elsewhere without expending the resources to go there in the first place. Except for life itself. It's actually far more likely that other species would be infinitely more valuable as a source of study than for any material resources.

I think you're failing to see the changes made in how nations behave toward one another. The trend has been away from colonization and exploitation of weaker nations and tribes, particularly since WW2. If we project that trend forward, by the time we're capable of interstellar travel, we'll likely have adopted a total non-interference mandate.

And it makes sense for a species capable of advanced technology to evolve in this direction. In order to develop technology, a species has to be pro-social and cooperative. Sharing the workload is essential, it would be impossible for any individual, or even a species that prefers isolated tribalism, to develop interstellar travel.

They're just being friendly.