An even darker take, if some renegade member of an advanced alien race does decide to spend a lot of resources on exploring the universe, and gains the means to

An even darker take, if some renegade member of an advanced alien race does decide to spend a lot of resources on exploring the universe, and gains the means to do so, the other members of their species may very well plug them into a simulation while they are sleeping and make them think they are exploring the cosmos. Unless a species is completely post scarcity, there is a strong ethical argument to be made that this is the correct thing to do, versus spending a lot of resources on "mere exploration",