This seems like a very limited, anthropogenic view of things. Because Prof. Conway can't imagine life evolving on a planet much different than our own, and he can't imagine intelligent life evolving out of a different niche as ourselves, he concludes that it is necessary for alien life to resemble ourselves.

How very Twilight-Zone like thinking.

Along these lines, has any scientists attempted running evolutionary algorithms to see if we can simulate approximations of spontaneous evolution of human-like life forms?