[throwaway29292]

Hmm. If Darwinian evolution is based on factors currently present around the species, wouldn't it basically be optimizing for short-term factors? So you could call Darwinian evolution a greedy algorithm, that optimizes for a local maxima. What about the global maxima, how can life evolve to that state?

[albertkawmi]

If I understand your question, the answer might be something to do with what happened in humans; we developed brains large enough to be able to recognise patterns in our own behaviour and abstract those across all aspects of life.

Having said that, the long term stability of that path is definitely debatable!

[tbabb]

> What about the global maxima, how can life evolve to that state?

It doesn't. Evolution is indeed a greedy algorithm, and cannot plan.