MC doing things "automatically" or "by default" is a can of worms. I estimate that most on this forum see MC as a power-user powerful media management tool to configure as desired (that is certainly why I chose it), and we reasonably think MC should respect how we set it up.
That said, once MC's power-user sets it up, it would be nice to have a grandma-proof mode that DOES make it easy to play and hard to screw up. Maybe that should literally a mode that can be invoked, similar to the various other modes, but maybe locked-down, and with separately controlled options such as AUDIO-ON, NO-EDIT, access to views/playlists controlled per list (for instance, so a view used for music management, tagging, whatever, can be set to not appear in the USER UI, but only in the ADMIN UI).
Having two-levels of UI in MC would not be unusual. This has been common practice of several database development platforms, which long-ago implemented two levels, USER and DEVELOPER: Microsoft Access, FileMaker, Visual FoxPro, Lotus Notes, etc. The idea is to prevent an end-user from seeing/doing/changing things that the power-user/developer set up, for everyone's protection.
My workaround for MC's AUDIO ON surprise is to keep headphones plugged in.