I mean, you're just engaging in counter hubris.

>like claiming you can build an airplane just as good as a modern jet using cardboard and duct tape.

Like, at least make an analogy that makes sense.

"You can't build a billion dollar airplane by spending 100 billion dollars in tokens"

Because that's more of what we're doing here with AI. And when you say it my way suddenly the idea shifts from "of course that's not possible" to "well, that's a lot of tokens, maybe an evolutionary algorithm could".

Neurobiology has to be complex because we have to keep meat alive, breeding, and evolving in the environment it lives in. This said absolutely nothing about the minimum viable requirements for intelligence or consciousness (or if being conscious is even necessary for a higher intelligence agent).