[pnut]

Lee Smolin proposed a really compelling concept in "Life of the Cosmos" - that the reason our universe has the universal constants that it does, is the product of natural selection at the cosmological level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin#Fecund_universes

His idea is that production of black holes is the universe producing offspring, and our perception that a black hole is constrained within a coordinate space in our own universe, is an illusion.

[trophycase]

I personally subscribe to this theory. I also think it's plausible that the development of intelligent life may be a part of the universe's reproductive process and may end up facilitating it in some way