Would you, could you, can "we", know how likely it is to get past that stage?
It's hard to say. It's happened one time out of one that we know of. Now if the planet had been chosen at random then I would say that on that basis we should think it likely --- it may be a small sample, but since it's all we have, we shouldn't ignore it for being small.
But in this case we have a biased sample. If life, or post-blobby-thing life, had only happened on one planet in the whole universe, than naturally any beings intelligent enough to be sitting around discussing the odds of it happening like we are would have to be living on that one planet.