Yep, I agree with him that we're likely to find bacterial type life all over the place where there's water. At least if we can travel to places. But 'complex life' is going to be beyond scarce.

Though it's quite possible that if there is something on Venus or Mars it's Earth-origined, since conditions here 4 billion years ago look better for abiogenesis.

There’s nothing stopping there from being several great filters.

There is the power law heuristic, that 90% of results are often due to 10% of phenomena.

If there are several filters, then they may differ in effectiveness by many multiples, and then it's semantics as to whether you say any beyond the largest are "great".

Thanks for posting this- I've not heard of Nick Lane but this thought is exactly what I've considered the likely state of affairs.