To what extent are humans optimized? Compared to the most efficient method of land mobility (that still retains all the same functionality e.g. ability to climb stairs) how efficient are human legs? Compared to the most efficient way to take in their respective types of data, how efficient are human eyes, ears, etc?
Most importantly, compared to the most efficient way to do the types of calculations it does, how efficient are human brains/neurons etc.? Obviously, digital computers are much more efficient at the types of computations they do. With semiconductors as an obvious counterexample, we can be fairly certain that any digital computation human brains do is not even close to the theoretical maximum efficiency it could have. But I've heard some say that human brains might use certain types of analog computation at least in part. Is it possible that the analog parts of human brains are even e.g. 10 percent as efficient as a maximally efficient version of computational substrate designed for a similar purpose?
Obviously, all the answers to this will probably be well within the realm of conjecture. Unless, that is, anyone actually does have some sort of publication going into detail about this type of thing, but I doubt it. I'd still like to see what this community cares to predict about this subject/offer as conjecture.
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You're looking for specialisation versus general, though. Is there some animal better than humans at locomotion? Probably, I can't be bothered looking this one up. Same for all the rest of it as a single point of examination. But put the entire package together, and we're probably very much optimised (there can always be improvements, some genetic engineer will figure out how to give humans three sets of legs or something).
Personally, I'd advise to forget all the stuff about "the brain is like a computer". No, it's not, but humans have been making these analogies with machinery since gears and cogs. We try to understand how the lump of matter in our skull works to do what it does, and we try to make deductions from the way the machines we construct work - oh, a clock works with these gears and springs and drives, a brain must work like that too.
The brain is a computer and I'm not sure how you can meaningfully argue that it isn't
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