I find your comment insulting to the people who spend time and resources in the search for life outside our planet.

You make it sound like they're unimaginative dolts.

It's not simplistic, it's simply practical. Either we search for life as we know it, or we don't search at all.

You can pontificate all you want about how incomprehensible extraterrestrial life could be, but where does that get us?

Further, I find that ant/human trope to be cerebral wankery.

Sure, ants can't comprehend what they've encountered, even as they crawl up our leg. But the gap between our intelligence levels is enormous.

I think it's much more likely that humans fall far enough right on the intelligence spectrum that we would be able to spot and recognize other forms of life in the universe, even if they happen to be 100x more intelligent than us.