Founder, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org). Part-time tech consultant, Our World in Data. Former software engineering manager and tech startup founder.
I think until recently, most scientists assumed that mirror bacteria would (a) not be able to replicate well in an environment without many matching-chirality nutrients, and/or (b) would be caught by the immune system. It's only recently that a group of scientists got more concerned and did a more in-depth investigation of the question.
Yes, antibodies could adapt to mirror pathogens. The concern is that the system which generates antibodies wouldn't be strongly triggered. The Science article says: “For example, experiments show that mirror proteins resist cleavage into peptides for antigen presentation and do not reliably trigger important adaptive immune responses such as the production of antibodies (11, 12).”
Given that mirror life hasn't arisen independently on Earth in ~4B years, I don't think we need to take any steps to stop it from doing so in the future. Either abiogenesis is extremely rare, or when new life does arise naturally, it is so weak that it is outcompeted by more evolved life.
I agree that this is a risk from any extraterrestrial life we might encounter.
I appreciate that! Would like to get back to them at some point…
I don't intend to write something anodyne, and don't think I am doing so. Let me know what you think once I'm at least a few chapters in.
Thanks, added a more prominent link
I don't think that's right. The world now is much better than the world when it was smaller, and I think that is closely related to population growth. So I think it is actually possible to conclude that more people are better.
Software/internet gives us much better ability to find.
Re competitors, the idea is that we're not all competing for a single prize; we're being sorted into niches. If there is 1 songwriter and 1 lyricist, they kind of have to work together. If there are 100 of each, then they can match with each other according to style and taste. That's not 100x competition, it's just much better matching.
That is a good point. Still, the fact that individual companies, for instance, develop layers of bureaucracy is not an argument against having a large economy. It's an argument for having a lot of companies of different sizes, and in particular for making sure that market entry doesn't become too difficult and that competition is always possible. And maybe at the governance level it is an argument for many smaller nations rather than one world government.
The asymmetric advantage of bacteria is that they can invade your body but not vice versa.