What would the “good idea” to “bad idea” ratio need to exceed before life was wiped out altogether, let alone evolve?
“Bad ideas” clearly outnumber “good ideas” but they impact the survival of an individual and its ability to pass on the trait. Extinction Events are where the environment changes so drastically that most creatures cannot individually survive and the kill off doesn’t give time for adaptation.
If you look at the various extinction events, you will see that they vary from a snowball earth to a fireball and resulting cloud cover that kept the normal cycles of plant life from happening for some time (years). The Permian extinction resulted from a poisoned atmosphere and ocean from volcanic flows and coal deposit fires. For most species, there was no change that could save them. However some plants and animals did survive and in the period afterwards there was an explosion of new creatures evolved from the survivors and of the survivors we still have many.