[mtqwerty]

This is an insightful comment but I think you’re missing one thing in your understanding of natural evolution. Evolution has a “reward function” and it’s survival of the fittest.

As reproduction produces different variants of the same organism, some variations help the organism while others do not. Organisms with the helpful mutations will be more likely to pass those onto their offspring. Organisms with detrimental variations will be less likely to pass those variations to their kids.

It’s not a precise process like gradient descent but when there are billions (trillions?) of organisms evoking simultaneously and independently, it makes more sense how the complexity of biology has come about.