Indeed! Where evolution really excels is optimizing for energy efficiency in local maxima. Once a niche is found, evolution will optimize the hell out of it. Genetic algorithms are achieving much of the same success in similar use cases. We use them to optimize the machine learning structures that make voice recognition and such possible. Evolution is really bad at breaking out of those same local maxima though, which is why nature is mostly really crappy things that sorta work well enough for the animal to reproduce and not much else.
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