I got nerd-sniped wrt the genetic algorithm.

Technically birdshot from a shotgun is also randomly distributed (passing through a cone). This actually improves the chance of hitting the clay pigeon, because the birdshot spreads out and each individual ball has a chance to hit.

Genetic algo is similar. it's an optimizer that - in order to avoid local optima - will 'shotgun' an area around its current best guess.

Both are non-deterministic, both have some metric to optimise, one is specific and efficient, the other is too broad and very expensive

Temperature is the rephrasing of randomness. No difference, just much better matchers.