One thing that particular piques my interest is the diversity of possible automata, not just forms in any particular one, but diversity of rule sets as well.
What do you think is special about the GOL rule set compared to other life-like rules?
Do you think it was a historical accident this particular rule set became so famous, or not?
Are there alternatives you are also interested in?
On the other hand, Conway had some very specific criteria for the rule he was looking for. "B3/S23" is about as simple a set of rules as you can find for a range-1 Moore-neighborhood outer totalistic cellular automaton on a square grid.
So unless Conway's eye had happened to get caught by some slightly more complicated rule before he and his team happened on B3/S23, he'd be quite likely to settle on "B3/S23" all over again. It's one of the few candidates for the simplest rule that does obviously interesting things and seems likely to allow for computational universality. I mean, there are untold numbers of equally promising rules in larger rulespaces like the "isotropic non-totalistic" rules
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Isotropic_non-totalistic_rule
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If we meet up with an alien civilization some day, it would be extremely amusing if we happened to show them some Life patterns and they said (in so many words) "Hey! You know about Pnurflpeef's Game of Life?!?" Not a likely scenario, by any means, but not quite impossible either.