Exciting post on a really cool topic!
My take is that aliens capable of traveling to the Earth will not care to significantly intervene in our lives. It's not like we, when coming across an anthill in the woods, step up and say "Hello little ones, I have come on behalf of humankind, now take me to your queen!"

Even if they wanted to study us they would probably make sure to not disrupt too much, just like if human scientists want to study an animal, they don't go ahead and disrupt the whole flock but instead take a lone animal. I can imagine us in a few thousand years when we can do interstellar travel. If we were to come across an intelligent life form, what questions would we ask ourselves? First we would obviously try to see to what degree they had come to master the universe through science and technology. If they were much less mature I would guess that we would relfect back on our own past and think that it would be better to leave them alone untill they were mature enough to handle our technologies.

Anyways a fascinating topic. Thanks for writing and sharing it!