You missed the dialogue attribution, “wryly said”. I’m sure Rechtschaffen knows that evolution doesn’t make mistakes. I think he knows that if an animal somehow could have evolved to not need sleep, and still have high cognitive abilities, one would have. In fact, some people can function well with less sleep, and I’d say they do have an advantage.
I’d say that’s what we do, or at least think we are doing, after we have arrived here, after all the evolution has created us as imperfect beings. Since I had not beat the odds of driving under the influence, did I someone “figure out” how to deal with the challenge of a drug culture and survive? If I had chosen to manipulate a church into giving me a lifetime of support, and never let on that I thought they were idiots, did I “deal with the situation in front of” me, or did I “do the best with what I had”?
What sets us apart from creatures that don’t appear to have language skills, is that we can express all of our advantages and disadvantages and calculate odds of them helping or harming us. I’d say we are extremely bad at it, since so many come up with logic like, “well, I just fell like that’s true, so I’ll act like it’s true, and so far I’m doing okay, and have no need to look at any more reasoning or evidence.”