Is there life out there?
Infinite universe. Yup.
Do they exist before us?
Not likely, as it takes awhile to evolve. Maybe one go round.
Have they not existed yet, and we’ll be long dead when they got off the ground?
Very likely.
Do they exist now and we’ll never here from them?
Quite likely.
Have intelligent beings flown all the way to a far spiral arm to a relatively unimportant planet, left zero evidence, and messed with people?
Waste of time, unless you like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
If they come here, is it probably a worst case scenario for resources?
But there’s so many other similar resources before us, other than complex life.
Maybe we’re the first truly intelligent life form in the history of the universe to evolve in the short time the universe has been alive, and once we get to where we’re going we’re like the advanced race sending plans throughout the universe like the movie Contact, or the advanced extinct civilization in the show the Expanse.
I like the idea of the interstellar transportation bandwidth, in context with self-replicating probes, because I read a paper once where a guy utilizes the Fermi paradox to realize we could spread human knowledge throughout all corners of the universe eventually.
But the idea they’ve literally been here to visit us is just as absurd as saying there is no life out there in the universe.