It sure makes sense to assume we're neither alone nor first, as until we actually prove it either way that's just what the odds are - but I'm tired of people acting like this means we're definitely not the first. If you gave 10,000 people a number between 1 and 10,000 in random order, the probability that any given person got number 1 is 1/10,000, and yet the probability that someone got 1 is 1.
(though there's another problem at play: "first" may not necessarily be a well-defined term at these scales)
I agree with you the odds are strongly in favour of us not being first or unique. I didn’t say we must be first but find it very unlikely given the numbers.
My intuition tells me it's not like that, but it's nothing but intuition.
It's the proportion that matters, not absolute numbers.
The problem with origin of life is we can't do that with the information we have. It's not that the probability is high or low, it's that it's unknown.