On: NASA’s $8B plan to find extraterrestrial life

[rogerbinns]

This is well trodden ground. Start with the Fermi paradox: statistically there is a very large amount of stuff in the universe, so even low probability things like life should be out there, but currently don't appear to be.

The wikipedia page has a nice collection of reasons including yours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox