Yes, exactly. Tools perform without "knowing" the purpose. Unintelligent yet effective.

So, "perform a selection over the enumerated combinations in the solutions space" works without the process being further sophisticated. It works as much as it can - as a preparation of data until the stage in which intelligence is required.

We have been doing it since a while; simulated annealing, genetic algorithms... Dumb hammers in a way, encoding an action from an intelligent operator, and providing an effective aid when under intelligent control.