We have another datapoint though, the age of the Earth. Life started fairly early after the Earth cooled, about a billion years after initial formation. This

We have another datapoint though, the age of the Earth. Life started fairly early after the Earth cooled, about a billion years after initial formation. This implies that abiogensis could have happened several times since then and died out; created the same chemical system independently; was out-competed by regular DNA life; or they're around but we just haven't discovered alternative forms of life on earth. But life capable of communicating across space didn't arrive until 4.5 billions years and after several mass extinctions. Even on a cosmic scale that's a very long time.