This is not "brute-force" though. It's an iterative search algorithm. You learn things at each iteration. You also don't search blindly. You use "something" (heuristics, experience, intuition) to come up with "ideas" at each iteration. You don't try 650 random programs. You try 650 different ideas each learning from the results of previous trials.

Yes this is the "Universal Problem Solving Algorithm". It's actually the same algorithm used by Evolution.

Also this algorithm is vastly different than "monkeys with typewriters". Monkeys don't learn or evolve their writing. There is no memory, no constraints, no learning-curve. At each iteration they freshly sample from a Uniform Distribution. Expected time for a solution is infinitely long.

"The Universal Algorithm" on the other hand is incredibly fast. Humans (designers, researchers) also use the same algorithm but they are much slower to iterate than computers. Instead of trying 650 different ideas at a single run, we have 100s of researchers each try few different ideas independently.

Thank you. I've never seen 'brute force' and 'type writing monkeys' abused so much than these LLM discussions.