Does “brute force” allow for heuristics and direction?
If it doesn’t (“brute” as opposite of “smart”, just dumb iteration to exhaustion) then you’re right, of course.
But if it does, then I’m not sure it’s patently absurd - novel ideas could be merely a matter of chance of having all the precursors together at the right time, a stochastic process. And it scales well, bearing at least some resemblance to brute force approaches - although the term is not entirely great (something around “stochastic”, “trial-and-error”, and “heuristic” is probably a better term).
If it doesn’t (“brute” as opposite of “smart”, just dumb iteration to exhaustion) then you’re right, of course.
But if it does, then I’m not sure it’s patently absurd - novel ideas could be merely a matter of chance of having all the precursors together at the right time, a stochastic process. And it scales well, bearing at least some resemblance to brute force approaches - although the term is not entirely great (something around “stochastic”, “trial-and-error”, and “heuristic” is probably a better term).