From his hot Jupiter example, I think he's going for the point that we default de-prioritize (aka underfund/ don't fund, I presume) things like SETI, a crash program to send a probe to catch Oumumua, or telescopes designed to look at extra-solar planet atmospheres, etc, because those programs are only justified by starting with the premise that there could and should be aliens out there. The baseline assumption is nobody's there, so these programs don't get the money they should, because why fund programs to look for something that we already know isn't there.
EDIT: Probably the *real* heart of the matter is that science is underfunded across the board and scientists are wary of asking for money to do things that are easily ridiculed in the public sphere, lest the funding problem worsen. It's the same situation for longevity research.