I wasn’t limiting myself to biology, hence talking about ‘replicating systems’. I was more going for the possibility that the sorts of places that non-biologically-descended replicators can replicate are also very limited, possibly to not terribly much wider-ranging to those in which biological replicators can work.
We can send one-off things that work for a long time all over the place, but all you need for them not to establish themselves somewhere is for the successful replacement rate to be less than one.
I wasn’t limiting myself to biology, hence talking about ‘replicating systems’. I was more going for the possibility that the sorts of places that non-biologically-descended replicators can replicate are also very limited, possibly to not terribly much wider-ranging to those in which biological replicators can work.
We can send one-off things that work for a long time all over the place, but all you need for them not to establish themselves somewhere is for the successful replacement rate to be less than one.