That is one of the biggest reasons I'm excited about the possibility of meeting an alien species; imagine all the things they must have discovered in their millions of years of trial and error.
Even if they're not godlike in terms of technology, the simple difference in perspective must have yielded at least a few discoveries that could potentially change human civilization.
We can now simulate most biological processes, and the technology to simulate even more is quickly approaching. What will be world be like when we can execute centuries of trial and error in milliseconds?
> The crazy thing is, we are extremely close to becoming those godlike aliens.
Yes, I also actually worry about the possibility that the first alien civilization we meet may be less advanced than us, and the greedy fucks among us will exploit them the same way they do their fellow humans.
This is solved already... Capitalism makes it work across time.
(What is discovered now will with most certainty be available specie-wide in a couple of decades... and it's accelerating).
There is lots of unfairness and non-uniformity in the system, for example where you are born matters much more than it should.