There are many assumptions and a story built on assumptions in the quote you mentioned.
Like, only elements we know about exist, and no matter what conditions might be carbon is an absolute must for life.
Like, only elements we know about exist, and no matter what conditions might be carbon is an absolute must for life.
But if you're looking for life, it seems very likely that most life is made out of carbon; possibly nearly all of it. You might as well start looking there. We have limited resources, after all.
The interesting thing with elements is that they describe almost all conventional matter in a very predictable pattern and we can pretty much enumerate them. Some scientists are even trying to make the next elements (Ununennium for instance), even though there are incredibly unlikely to occur in nature.
Granted, elements only describe a fraction of all matter, but we do not really expect anything complex to last long as plasma (stars), and we do not know much of dark matter anyway.
> no matter what conditions might be carbon is an absolute must for life
GP was answering this exact point. In short, it's just that the other elements do not look as promising as carbon for building complex molecules (whether we know them or not).