I didn't mean to say that evolution avoids local optima, but I wantend to say that it doesn't have to get "trapped", in the sense that it was able to produce such complex organisms as humans..

Because of the incremental nature (it can't think moves ahead) only a tiny percentage of all viable life forms can be produced by evolutionary processes. Species forged by their ruthless struggle for survival. Maybe humanity will be the first species to escape evolutionary constraints, but maybe humanity is like the many other species that burn brightly but briefly. The universe seems to be cold and empty and devoid of life. Perhaps evolution is very good at producing cockroaches and not that good at creating intelligent life.

Right, but it could well be that there is some other greatly superior organization of life toward which there exists no evolutionary path.

And on the flip side, a sufficient abundance of resources and/or lack of predators mean non-optimal species can procreate, and thus find other local optima.

In terms of evolution, the fitness of a species is defined by its ability to reproduce. In the circumstances you describe, selection pressure exists for the species that can reproduce the fastest. Predators or resource constraints are not a requirement for evolution.

> In the circumstances you describe, selection pressure exists for the species that can reproduce the fastest.

My point was there's no pressure without constraints. A faster-reproducing species will only apply a pressure if starts exhausting a resource or similar.