His point was that the "most likely" possibility is that life on nearby Earth-like planets would be primitive. In other words, highly-evolved life is somewhat rare; we're not "first" so much as "only" in nearby space.<br><br>The final paragraph suggests that there could be "thousands" of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. That still leaves hundreds of light-years of average separation (and it's worse out here where the stars are sparse) -- thus not "nearby".