Well, I can’t recall what I watched one time - a tv show I think, and in this show, the longest living creatures in the universe were extremely dumb but excellent team players who knew their roles and lived almost on autopilot.

I think it’s not a far fetched idea that to survive for a long time, you have to be very dumb. Any sign of intelligence (as in human or beyond) probably results in some sort of a catastrophic outcome - be it self-annihilation or destroying the habitat. To become a type 2 of 3 civilization is probably very difficult. Even if you do make it to a solar empire stage, you probably don’t last long enough to have your paths intersect with some other life form due to sheer distances beyond a solar system.