Not the Onion: NASA discovers 715 new planets

[longship]

42. You are, of course, correct.

But there are many, many red dwarfs which are not first generation.

As far as wiping themselves out, we don't know anything about alien sociology or psychology. It is likely to be quite divergent to human. That's always the problem with these speculations. One has to try not to anthropomorphize the aliens. Damned difficult not to do. As you aptly point out, we have one data point.

Nevertheless, I think it's fairly inevitable that there's life out there, and also likely intelligent life. The numbers are just too large for there not to be. (That's a very unscientific way of putting it, though.)