[memetichazard]

Wouldn't life favor the flipped version because it has no natural predators? Consider it an invasive species [1], something there are many examples of and usually a serious problem. While life may favour existing right-handed life over developing left-handed life, this does not mean it will favor existing right-handed life over developed left-handed life - the argument is akin to saying that an invasive species cannot dominate because it hasn't evolved into place already.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species

[jerf]

Ah, yes, maybe that is what I'm missing. Mentally I have a hard time seeing bacteria as something that can be preyed upon, but there's nothing impossible about that, of course, what with the way it happens and all.

(Like so many "tipping point"-type arguments my gut still says that if there wasn't an advantage to having us all on the same hand, particularly the ability to pick up correctly-handed molecules out of the environment and use them, that we'd already live in a 50-50 world; if the system is that vulnerable to tipping it would already be tipped, so a small dribbling of cyanobacteria in the ocean will probably simply result in the mirrors dying off. If life is as easy to start up as it seems to be, it seems like at least once a mirror life form should have started up. But that's a plausible line of reasoning, not anything like a proof.)