Said in my comment above the LOWER FEES transaction was confirmed, AND this transaction appeared AFTER the one with higher fees.
So definitely not a standard RBF transaction. Like the sender “colluded” with the miner to have this second lower transaction in the block.
Before or after makes no difference, the block height of both transactions were the same.
Nobody knows who the next miner will be, there are about 20-30 pools mining blocks everyday.
The miner who mined the next block received the chain (with a transaction that paid less) first. That previous transaction made no difference for him. But that chain was broadcasted first to him and for him it was always the longest chain. He ignored the other one.
Every milisecond counts. Transactions are valid, they just move on.