[ewjordan]

Yes, "fold proteins" is a member of a distinguished class of algorithms that DNA is exceptionally well suited to handle.

Similarly, "simulate shallow wave dynamics" is in the class of algorithms that a water tank is pretty near optimal for, and the "find local minima" problem is handled with remarkable ease by gravity and a rolling ball; we'd be hard pressed to write computer programs that solve any of these problems using fewer bits than we can get by with by using the real world to solve them instead.

But most algorithms are not made that easy by any of these computational substrates; in fact, vanishingly few of them are, and an algorithm is only likely to be "easy" relative to vanishingly few systems.

What would let us assume that "Do intelligence" is a member of the subset of problems that are made easy by the detailed workings of biology? Because the a priori probability that it falls into that class is just about zero...