How is it that some tiny number of man made mirror life forms would be such a threat to the millions of naturally occurring life forms, but those millions of naturally occurring life forms would not be an absolutely overwhelming symmetrical threat to those few man made mirror forms? This whole analysis seems to be assuming that the man made mirror forms will have some grossly asymmetrical advantage.
How is it that some tiny number of man made mirror life forms would be such a threat to the millions of naturally occurring life forms, but those millions of naturally occurring life forms would not be an absolutely overwhelming symmetrical threat to those few man made mirror forms?
Can’t you ask the same question for any invasive species? Yet invasive species exist. “How is it that some people putting a few Nile perch into Lake Victoria in the 1950s would cause ‘the extinction or near-extinction of several hundred native species’, but the native species of Lake Victoria would not be an absolutely overwhelming symmetrical threat to those Nile perch?”
The advantage is that they would have neither predators nor parasites, and their prey would not have adapted defenses to them. This would be true of any organism with a sufficiently unearthly biochemistry. Mirror life is the only such organism we are likely to create in the near term.
How is it that some tiny number of man made mirror life forms would be such a threat to the millions of naturally occurring life forms, but those millions of naturally occurring life forms would not be an absolutely overwhelming symmetrical threat to those few man made mirror forms? This whole analysis seems to be assuming that the man made mirror forms will have some grossly asymmetrical advantage.
Can’t you ask the same question for any invasive species? Yet invasive species exist. “How is it that some people putting a few Nile perch into Lake Victoria in the 1950s would cause ‘the extinction or near-extinction of several hundred native species’, but the native species of Lake Victoria would not be an absolutely overwhelming symmetrical threat to those Nile perch?”
The advantage is that they would have neither predators nor parasites, and their prey would not have adapted defenses to them. This would be true of any organism with a sufficiently unearthly biochemistry. Mirror life is the only such organism we are likely to create in the near term.
The asymmetric advantage of bacteria is that they can invade your body but not vice versa.