Nature had a planet and several billion years. Of course the goal wasn't AGI, it was survival, and horseshoe crabs have done a pretty good job of that. So have beatles, with their large number of species. How would you select for only AGI? It would be like selecting for only the greatest eyes (Mantis shrimp), but doing it over the entire tree of life. You still need a way to narrow down to the best eyes.

Survival is not a goal, it's just the score keeping system.

What, oh wise one, is the goal?

Nothing. Evoultion came about randomly, not by intent, so it has no goal.

> Nothing. Evolution came about randomly, not by intent, so it has no goal.

Evolution created a goal from nothing, which is self-replication. It works on many levels - self replicating DNA, self replicating cells, self replicating ideas (memes), self replicating ecosystem, even the economy has become a self replicator.

But if the goal is to use evolution as model for generating AGI, then the problem is narrowing down all the surviving species to the ones that result in AGI, as opposed to a thousand other successful traits.

That's pretty meaningless - in that case the word goal doesn't have a meaning because everything is just as random as evolution, which isn't very random but whatever.

Evolution is not random. It requires self replication in order to transmit and evolve genes. Everything else is much more random.

Reduction of entropy. Which seems quite the opposite of growth. However effectively, say energy per volume, it allows for growth.

^

I think that's what the person you are replying to is arguing for...