Well... okay, I guess that could work. I suppose it is hard to have tidal pools without tides, but the main reason animate life came out of the oceans is that there was food on land, in the form of plants. I don't know enough about it to argue the point effectively. However, I can say that the only thing special about Earth's moon is that it's pretty large in comparison. Most moons are captured objects or formed from rings, but ours came from an impact, so it's unusually big, which does in deed make for a strong tidal influence. But the same is true for Charon and Pluto, and, more importantly, every single moon of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Especially Jupiter's Gallilean sattelites- Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, three of which we think could be very good candidates for ancient or even present life to exist. Moons of jovian gas giants have quite a bit of tidal influence being exerted on them by the planets they rotate, and it's predicted that most of the planets in the galaxy are gas giants, plus there would in deed be tides on their moons if there was liquid water. Therefore, if tides are in fact important to evolution as you say, it still doesn't rule out non-earth like planets (or moons) for intelligent life.
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