Evolution as optimization process has a lot of problems though. Most importantly, it&#x27;s optimizing for fitness. As Richerson &amp; Boyd memorably put it, &quot;All animals are under stringent selection pressure to be as stupid as they can get away with.&quot; Fitness is not necessarily something we&#x27;re interested in.<p>Second, evolution is susceptible to getting caught in local maxima&#x2F;minima. Though it&#x27;s hard to argue that we could engineer ourselves to a higher peak, because we can&#x27;t really see any other peaks at the moment.