This doesn't contradict the conclusion of the paper, it makes no difference as to whether we're going to find anybody we can have a conversation with, ("hey, how annoying is light speed?") but I think our definition for simple and complex life is off.

eg "more likely to find simple life on Mars."

That ape and octopus exist, says that earth didn't win the intelligence lottery, we are watching the long slow grind of compound interest.

When you look at our world we see that the lipid bilayer is preserved, that rna is preserved in every living thing, but eyes have evolved independently many times. That the last common ancestor of octopus and human was a little wriggly thing, leads me to believe that forming a boundary between self and non self is hard (the bilayer), that forming a system of heredity is hard (first rna then dna). That the accumulation of processes that use energy, resources and information from the environment in new ways is a long relentless grind. The basic body form, multicellularity and a gut were, big difficult changes, but maybe intelligence is just paint on a hard won foundation.