Who will be closest regarding what life James Webb finds.

[brewer]

Everyone is avoiding 69 for some reason.  Would such be due to Chance or Design?

Fear, much fear.

[AFTT47]

I'm skeptical there will be any because that is not what Webb's design was optimized for. Webb is optimized for viewing the early universe where most radiation has been red-shifted to the infrared domain.

[Paleophyte]

How many exo planets by december 31 2023 will James webb find to have good indications of life?
My guess is 80 planets.
Feel free to make your guess here on the thread you could even try and make a more educated guess than my very rough ball park but I thought I should throw my guess into the hat never the less.

As others have already mentioned, the answer here is somewhat contingent on what you consider to be a "good" indicator. It's also going to depend on how we define life. Let's get a little more specific:

How many exo-planets with abundant molecular oxygen (>5% O2) and water vapour in their atmospheres do you think that the JWST will have found by December 31, 2023?

I'll bet 17.

Here's the Cycle 1 Observation Schedule for anybody who wants to make an informed guess.

[Pat Mustard]

We'll finally find Bertrand Russell's lost teapot.🫖

[highdimensionman]

Exoplanets are interesting, but I'm wondering if the JWT will see so far back in space-time that it hits the Dark Ages period.

I don't think they'll find the edge of space in the dimension of time at a guess. However if it is found then no one will ever be able to pick on things like measurement divergence and having no idea really what dark matter or dark energy is just how the impact of the workings of the universe skews more from the model with out such a leap of faith. If they find the edge then all nay sayers will have to turn to religion, change profession or something else.
Scientists are great for jumping the gun though. Like how arrogant string theorists seemed to behave to alternative theories until the SUSE bet was lost at the LHC.
However Higgs was right but nothing exotic came from it, Finding the Higgs Boson how they did is like confirming an unintentional Ignorance regarding anything beyond the standard model.
It's better to get less and less ignorant than to think oneself completely right without enough proof. This is because of all the pitfalls one can fall in assuming they are right about how they perceive reality works without enough proof even sometimes when they think they have enough proof they might be leading their confidence further than proof in how right they think they are.
The bigger your sphere of knowledge the larger your sphere of ignorance around that.
So the smarter you are the closer you are to a bigger sphere of ignorance so one has to be careful their not later needing to redact the further into knowledge they go. 
I suppose that dream of being proven right especially if it's your own model at stake is a nice one maybe even a noble to go with that and you know even the lowest innovator dreams of such things but the nature of reality is not designed to please these intuitions most of the time. There are plenty of bruised egos in physics and this is not a bad thing it's just part of the challenge of understanding reality.
I'm not suggesting anything by saying all this just saying you might not find an edge.

[Anomalocaris]

I'm skeptical there will be any because that is not what Webb's design was optimized for. Webb is optimized for viewing the early universe where most radiation has been red-shifted to the infrared domain.

The 8-25 micrometer range JW is optimized for also happen to cover the peak emission  of goldilocks temperature range.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The human species will extinctify itself before we find a planet with 'good indications of life'.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

The human species will extinctify itself before we find a planet with 'good indications of life'.

Boru

Your optimism is unwarranted.   We will totally screw that up.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The human species will extinctify itself before we find a planet with 'good indications of life'.

Boru

Your optimism is unwarranted.   We will totally screw that up.

We're not clever enough to screw up our own extinction. It's already underway. And accelerating.

Boru

[highdimensionman]

Your optimism is unwarranted.   We will totally screw that up.

We're not clever enough to screw up our own extinction. It's already underway. And accelerating.

Boru

In all honesty were more lightly to screw up and go into another dark ages. All it takes is for man to screw up enough and the cultural pressure backwards will be unstoppable. I think this sort of issue of screwing up and going backwards is common place in the early development off civilisation more so than total annihilation. So my bet is with Anomalocaris we will lightly totally screw up annihilating ourselves. Just think how easy it would be to go backwards right now if Russia started launching nukes the people would survive but given a significant enough amount of damage people could start to perceive progress more as the enemy. If we don't go this way we still may improve over a more intensive fossil fuel era but people shouldn't count their chickens on man not screwing up.