The point was that a few years ago we had a solid, broadly-agreed-upon scientific theory of planetary formation. And it was wrong. That's interesting for scientific reasons, not philosophical ones.
That is absolutely true to some degree—we want to find out what conditions support life, and why the Earth did end up how it did, and resulted in conditions stable enough and correct enough to allow life to evolve for millions of years essentially uninterrupted.
It's the tone that I read into, and I have a tendency to look out for the earth-centric perspective, mainly because I find the alternative way to look at it basically mind-blowing and fascinating. That doesn't make study of the development of our solar system any less important, any more than the study of evolution makes biology less important. The study of planetary formation, the solar system, geology and every other related field are all extremely important to broadening and deepening our understanding of how the universe works. Understanding statistics and the anthropic principle just gives us a framework in which to view that knowledge that is even more true and complete, in my opinion.
(Aside: I'd guess it's because there are people like me, who often read comments before or without reading the article, that a well-written but not on-point comment like this can get upvoted. I wonder how you'd fix that?)
My bad, move along.
I don't even disagree with your point. But I posted because I did find the linked article interesting (if a little fluffy) and thought your digressive correction was missing some of that substance.
If you intentionally mean to go off-topic (which you usually shouldn't, but we'll assume you have something really amazing to say), it's best to explain that you're not actually talking about the topic at hand but you thought it was interesting because X. That way people will be able to read your comment in the light in which it was intended rather than straining to find relevance.
(Incidentally, I have no idea why you responded this way to my comment, which is explicitly about ways to ensure people read articles before voting on comments about the articles, and is not about you at all. Maybe you assumed it was on the topic of your comment?)