There is a pitfall with this line of argument in that it is appeal to intuition in a domain in which we have none, because we have no ability to intuit about la

There is a pitfall with this line of argument in that it is appeal to intuition in a domain in which we have none, because we have no ability to intuit about large numbers. That doesn't mean that it's wrong (though I myself think that it is); but appeals to "sheer unlikeliness" should be made with care because they can rely on facts such as "the chance for a given star system hosting a planet on which even simple life emerges is 1 in 10^X" hence "oh my 1 in 10^X is a very small number!". Where what matters is e.g. how that number compares to the number of such star systems. Etc etc. Predictive value aside, the Drake equation at least attempts to quantify.