Evolution of Eyes and Brains [The Life Engine]

The grayish purple eye cell allows organisms to perceive their environments—it looks a certain number of cells down the direction that the eye is actually facing.

The organism brain section contains evolvable preferences—which cell types to move toward, which to avoid, which to ignore—and these behavioral preferences mutate and evolve over time alongside anatomy.

The Life Engine implements a very simplistic form of intelligence—move toward certain cell types, away from others, ignore the rest—rather than using computationally expensive neural networks.

The function of the eye cells was inspired very heavily by trilobite eyes—these ancient arthropods that have a very simplistic eye that can see essentially what’s directly in front of it.

There is a theory that at least part of the Cambrian diversity was due to the evolution of vision and perception and decision making—very much parallel to what has been observed in the Life Engine simulation.

Stationary producers evolved camouflaged eyes despite being unable to use vision—predators fear eyes because predators have eyes, so producers exploit this by growing fake eyes to ward off attackers.

Aggressive predatory movers with vision evolved to actively hunt producers by moving toward producer cells, becoming extraordinarily aggressive and dominating the ecosystem.

Vision-enabled predators create enormous selective pressure on producers—even the slightest defensive advantage (growing killer cells, armor, extra health, camouflaged eyes) becomes enormously advantageous for survival.

The “purple flower” organism—a producer with extensive armor cells—successfully propagates despite highly aggressive predators by combining food production with defensive protection.

Peaceful movers evolved producer cells (non-functional for movement) purely to enable mutual attraction—organisms programmed to move toward producer cells end up following each other, creating school-of-fish behavior.