I am absolutely willing to accept that there is life out there in the universe that looks like us, or the aliens James Cameron made up for the movie Pandora. However, it seems unlikely that most life in the universe is like us. We could quickly contrast with the similarly dumbed down press piece about the possibility of non-human like aliens. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.400-the-face-of-first-contact-what-aliens-look-like.html

As a more rigorous counter-example, here is a relatively rigorous description of inorganic life:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070814150630.htm (not very good popular summary)

http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v70/i6/e066408 (2004 abstract, talks about plasma clouds with dust boundaries)

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1063-7869/50/4/R11/ (2007 abstract)

I wonder if a living plasma dust cloud could evolve the ability to communicate with a probe sent by transhumans. I'd put the odds above 1%.

If anyone has access to the papers, please email them to me or upload them on Scribd. The main idea I want to understand is what "Self-organizing structures are frequently seen both in laboratory and natural conditions" means, especially with regards to natural conditions and if the scientists have any probability estimates for how common helical growing plasma dust clouds are in the universe.