The Mayans, Toltecs, Aztecs, Souix, Cheyenne, Chippewa, etc.. never discovered the wheel...
The advent of Islam (eventually) destroyed Arab culture..
Without say, Newton, how much longer would it have taken to understand the laws of gravity?
Without Maxwell, would Einstein have deduced the theory of relativity?
Without Tesla, would we have slogged along with a direct current technology? ( He was the inventor/discoverer of alternating current, and the AC generators that provide our electrical services )
What's my point?
There are many things that can go wrong..
The Axis powers might have won WW2, changing the entire direction of world history..
Stalinism, instead of collapsing from economic and social failure, might have succeeded in gaining world control instead..
Politics can guide scientific endeavor.. So can religion, or the dictates of an insane tyrant..
Or, a Natural Disaster, catastrophic in proportion can set everything back to square one..
Even given the number of inhabitable worlds and the possibilities of intelligent life, technology, advanced civilization, War, some alien Bill & Hillary.. ... well, it's just too awful to consider..
They probably are too busy handling their own problems..
There's no guarantee that advanced civilizations mean that all problems are solved..
Just that there are new, and unforseen problems..