In order for this to work in real life, you'd have to prove a lot of other invariants:

- The mechanism to interpret the light data signal has to be in-step with the evolution of the eye. Getting light data without a brain evolving at the same time to interpret it is evolutionary recessive, i.e. a useless function. I.e. a real evolution would be more like "cat /dev/urandom > output.html", not a controlled ecosystem with a clear penalty-reward system.

- In nature, there is no 1:1 "reward / selection function" like in this simulation. In the computer, this "motivation factor" is externally given, so that the next generation is rewarded and selected out, in reality, there is no rule as to what is and isn't "better" or "fitter" or "more attractive to the other gender" (not like CS nerds would know). Sure, an organism can consume food, but beyond a certain point that wouldn't make the organism just "fat", not stronger. So there also need to be environmental mutations happening at the same time, that reinforce "more food = better evolved".

- There has to be a way for the animal to be so dominant, that the connection between light data and food can be genetically passed on and will not be associated with bad artifacts (see ChatGPT hallucinations for examples of "accidental bad artifacts in evolution" - and that "evolution" has millions of man-hours, money and R&D behind it).

- By the rule of "survival of the fittest", the next generation mutation has to be (in one single step) such a significant improvement over the last one that it won't be selected out again by recessive selection or dilution inside of the gene pool.

- The gene has to be active within 150 subsequent generations, without fail, cancer, recession and provide 150 times a dominant advantage, just to get a basic "eye" for 2D navigation with 10 light sensors. The minimum snail eye (pre-Cambrian) has 14.000 cells [1] (and a snail cannot see color).

- The real world is a 3D environment, which adds a monumental amount of complexity. Add to it the complexity of depth, color, shape, ...

- The mutation(s) have to happen either "at once" or be widespread (otherwise it's going to be like an Albino animal, i.e. some rare neutral mutation).

- All of this has to be done in an environment hostile to life in general (i.e. the edge of underwater vulcanoes, some primordial soup burning at several hundred degrees), all elements have to be at the right place, at the same time, etc. And be created out of nothing, of course.

While I do agree that it can be helpful for computer vision, computerized "evolution" is just adaptive statistical pattern matching, but it's absolutely nothing like real biology. It would be more realistic to just output "/dev/random > kernel-gen-xxx.iso" and then run it bare-metal, with no lab environment, no operating system, no programming language, no goal function, no selection / reward process, no debugging, etc.

Even Darwin had his problems with the eye. The reason I believe in God is not necessarily because I want to, but because evolution (not survival-of-the-fittest, but the "mutation creates information" aspect) requires far more faith and far more dogmas, which cannot be questioned for the sake of science. When I was in 8th grade biology, I took a stone from the schoolyard, put it on the teachers desk and said "alright, so this is a human if we wait 4 billion years". The teacher ignored me, but never told me I'm wrong.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00606433