It would only be a wash if you currently believe the chance of developing intelligence is > 50%. To me, the fact that intelligence is rare on earth makes me think the odds of developing intelligence elsewhere is rare too.
Depends on what you mean by Intelligence. We see tool use in many species, yet none of them are sending space ships. Maybe we should include an "industrialization" or "super-organization" to the criteria of aliens we'd want to trade with.
Makes a lot of assumptions that multiple technological societies can survive the early competitive period too ( the one we're pretty obviously still in)
How do you conclude that intelligence is rare on earth?