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Vladimir_Nesov comments on If it looks like utility maximizer and quacks like utility maximizer... - Less Wrong
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Having even one in a billion chance to invent agriculture or flight, so that the success can get selected, is already a tremendous optimization power. The presence of selection doesn't mean that selection is the process that does the optimizing, and the rarity of success in the absence of selection doesn't mean that optimization isn't there.
Optimization may just not be apparent until a new selection pressure finds its sole survivors. If optimization wasn't there, selection would just eliminate everyone (and if it's not fatal, you just won't notice a new niche).
I don't think it make sense to call the mere possibility of something "optimization power". In what sense is a possibility a "success" in the absence of a criterion for judging it so? Nor do I think it makes sense to assert that selection, a sequential process whose action increases (on average) a particular function, is not "do[ing] the optimizing". This is semantics, but fairly important semantics, I think.
You can't force cats to invent general relativity. Without human mind, it's impossible, while with human mind it's merely rare.
Given enough resources, time, and cats, I'm pretty sure I could.
ETA: That was not merely a joke, but it was too glib; I should make the point explicit. It's that with enough time to get enough variation and appropriate selection, many things are possible. A concept of optimization power which is only about possibility but takes no note of the mechanics of descent with modification is not useful. ETA2: Outside of selection processes, I think a concept of optimization power needs to take note of the rate of change in order to be useful.