If you mean to say that materials which have the property of self-replication with variation are essential to intelligence, then I agree with you.
One finds, in reality, that crystals do not meet this requirement -- the only known chemistry to provide it is a highly specific subtype of carbon chemistry called biology.
Yeah I think we are mostly on the same page for sure, I would nearly go so far as to say that self-replicating with variation is 'essential' for intelligence.. and I do utterly love evolution as an idea - but maybe it's just what happened-to-produce the main examples of intelligence we've observed so far in recent history on Earth? (personally I don't think it's just humans that are intelligent either though! so many animals and probably other things are extremely smart too! Just very hard to measure!)
And yeah I was only using the idea of a crystal as an analogy, all replicators (all life?) is a bit like a kind of smooshy-space-and-time-crystal in a way though right? Especially the multicellular kind!!
It's the regeneration/continuation of information of who-knows what type? All types! Obviously there's genes and Levin's vmem and other epigenetic stuff on the biological-side, but now there's also youtube, video-games, recipes, traditions? all memetic-replicators, or meta-memetic ones that control which other memes you allow in your life? I like to remember that all of them are subject to the rules-of-evolution too - there's a success for the memes themselves if they are getting us to carrying them forward!! Can be wildly different types of memories accross epic amounts of time too? Bloody amazing to think about I reckon! Evolution FTW!
One finds, in reality, that crystals do not meet this requirement -- the only known chemistry to provide it is a highly specific subtype of carbon chemistry called biology.