Too many people with too much time on their hands and income and or wealth and or taxpayer funding to spend that idle time on useless endeavors.
The chances are 50/50 that “alien” life will “find us” before we find them, so spend our “space” time on matters of empirical science that will be productive and useful to physically exploring space, and leave the “life on other planets” question open to being addressed BY SPACE EXPLORATION, period.
I disagree. If 99% of all planets with life only have microbial life on them, why would you think microbes have the same chance of finding us as we have of finding them?
Secondly, it'll be far better, not to mention cheaper, if we can detect and study those life forms with fancy new telescopes, etc., than addressing the issue by putting men in veeeeeery expensive starships and sending them to the stars.