For us it's hard to train a model because our compute and resources is nothing compared to nature's "compute" the whole universe: "it" has absurdly more resources to run different variations and massively parallel compute to run the evolutionary "algorithm", if you think about all the chemical building blocks, proteins, cells, that was "tried" and didn't survive.

From that angle our artificial models seem very sample efficient, but it's all hard to quantify it without know what was "tried" by the universe to reach the current state. But it's all weird to think about because there is no intent in natures optimizations it's just happens because it can and there is enough energy and parallel randomness to eventually happen.

And the real mystery is not how evolution achieved this but that the laws of chemistry/universe allow self-replicating structures to appear at all. In an universe with different rules it couldn't happen even with infinite trial and error compute.

Thanks for saying this. I wish people regarded the unimaginable vastness of the state space represented by the time scales involved and relatively small size of the interacting molecules. The inherent "parallel compute" is dizzying beyond our comprehension.

I wish we could know if our universe is an aberration.

Sure, the sheer volume of trial, error, and feedback that’s gone on in evolutionary history is mind boggling, but human intelligence is relatively recent and has had only a few hundred thousand turns at that wheel with a population of maybe a few million.

To be fair, we have few traits that are truly unique, but even going back along our branch of the tree of life all the way to the first recognisable mammals is not as many generations as you’d think. Certainly nothing like what goes on with fast breeding life like bacteria!

The enormity of effort also doesn’t explain how the end result works.

The way our genes encode for high level instinctual behaviour is akin to controlling the specific phrasing of a company’s quarterly report next year by changing out the coffee beans at the cafe that the accountant’s roommate frequents.

Even if I told you that I’m Doctor Strange and that I tried this ten million times before I got the exact right varietal of bean, you’d still be impressed and have a long series of follow questions!