"<a href=""https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTmxA2MvEqk&amp;t=8m50s"">8:50</a> "Tech Investment is inevitable" ... WOW ... that must be", with all respect Lex, one of the most crazy things i've heard coming from an Intelligent person.  Technology  or adv. Civ. are neither biological nor evolutionary need it. The purpose of Life is not to develop Tech. Therefore we are the freak ones on the Universe. We are the biggest and most beautiful mistake of Nature. Now you should calculate how often this mistake could happen. ... I will give you a hint.... Look how many species here on earth we able to become an Int. Civ. ... how many  for the Trillions we have in here?,(reply>), I doubt he's implying that intelligence is needed or it's some sort of goal of evelution to eventually reach it. It's just Murphy's law, Anything that can happen will happen.  Given enough time any possibility, now matter how small the chance will eventually happen.<br>So in an extraterrestrial ecosystem (as long as there isn't a complete extinction event) there will eventually be some sort of ecological niche created by nothing other than pure chance which gives the opportunity to the lifeform that fills said niche to evolve into an advanced intelligence. Just look at dolphins here on earth, they evolved entirely independent of us, an intelligence compareable to a 7 year old child. Given the right conditions to push them onto the "right" evolutionary path, who knows what they might evolve into. They are currently limited by their aquatic lifestyle and lack of usable limbs to hold tools. But like I said, who knows. They might fill a new niche in the future.