Odds of intelligent life occuring?

[bennyboy]

I'd say wherever evolution can occur, if the resources and environment are complex enough, intelligence must eventually also occur.  Intelligence just means high-order processing, and this is clearly linear rather than punctuated-- i.e. there's no critical mass at which pop! intelligence pops into the system.

I suspect that to a highly intelligent species, we may not be all that, after all.  We are pretty biased.

Why "must"? What requirement in nature is there for a human-equivalent?

Given that there is enough "stick" in the materials present in an environment, i.e. that there is the capacity for some patterns to persist and others not to, then greater complexity will allow for greater differentiation.  You aren't going to get complex evolutionary responses to very simple environments; you will, eventually, much more likely get complex responses to very complex environments. AND as more lifeforms evolve and enter into competition with each other, they will increase that environmental complexity, thereby allowing even greater complexity.

And nobody said anything about human-equivalent.

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How many species have there been through time? Including the extinct., insects, etc.
100 million? More?
And only one evolved intelligence. I wouldn't exactly call that a sample of 1 of 1.
Divide those m class planets out there by 100 million to get the true odds.

There's about (counts on fingers) ok, a lot!

lolwut?

ALL species have evolved intelligence.  They process their environments and generate a huge range of behavioral responses.

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The question is, did it happen elsewhere? We simply can't say.

Yeah, that's what "odds" means.