Continuing on both the comment in which you were responding too, and your on comments, I think it is be even more simply stated as:
You don't have to understand how intelligence works to create a machine with intelligence if you can create a machine with the same or similar evolutionary forces that worked to create intelligence in humanity and want to wait long enough for it to happen. This is a totally viable approach to creating an intelligent machine, as you can certainly create a machine that can mutate extremely rapidly.
The problem is, that doesn't help us figure out what intelligence is, unless the process of watching this happen somehow gives us insight in the matter, or we manage to create a cooperative machine intelligence superior to our own that's more up to the task.
You're applying evolutionary forces to a simplistic binary plateau.
This isn't intelligence, it's a subset of maximal solutions to bounded problems.
Hint: your dog bounds you as much as you bound your dog. Your dog has some input into your modern homo sapien sapien mind. Same goes for your atmosphere, your gut fauna, your planet's iron core and so on.
You don't have to understand how intelligence works to create a machine with intelligence if you can create a machine with the same or similar evolutionary forces that worked to create intelligence in humanity and want to wait long enough for it to happen. This is a totally viable approach to creating an intelligent machine, as you can certainly create a machine that can mutate extremely rapidly.
The problem is, that doesn't help us figure out what intelligence is, unless the process of watching this happen somehow gives us insight in the matter, or we manage to create a cooperative machine intelligence superior to our own that's more up to the task.