then we can simply wait until we know that less than one in 2^25 million lifeforms are that optimal
You go and wait. I'll do other things in the meantime :-) Do you have any intuition how large that number is?
and we have more than 25 megabytes of information as to what that lifeform is.
You've spent all that 25Mb for an index into the lifeform space but you have not budgeted any information for the actual description of the lifeform.
Imagine the case where there's one bit. It tells you whether creature-0 or creature-1 is optimal. But it doesn't tell you what these creatures are.
In any case, all these numbers are based on the resistance of Earth mammals to genetic drift. That really doesn't limit how evolution can optimize with different creatures in different places.
Do you have any intuition how large that number is?
It's not going through them one at a time.
You've spent all that 25Mb for an index into the lifeform space but you have not budgeted any information for the actual description of the lifeform.
It's not a simple English description, but narrowing down the possibilities by a factor of two is always one bit of information. It doesn't matter whether it's "the first bit is one", "the xor of all the bits is one" or even "it's a hash of something starting with a one using X algorithm...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.