Right: We grew up in the same environment. We breathe the same air, we drink the same water, we bask in the same sun, we experience the same weather, our predators and prey are drawn from the same grab bag. That was my point: we have a long legacy of parallel development with animals. Machine intelligence? We're going to have absolutely nothing in common with it. And I'm not sure we will. When the inception parameters are so wildly different, what we see is not very likely to strike us as "intelligence." My dad has been trying to get me to read Godel Escher Bach for about 30 years now. Maybe one of these days.I agree with that. However, many animals express an intelligence we can at least relate to.
It's telling that we can't even agree upon the fundamentals of our own intelligence. We just know it when we see it.
There's one dialogue particular in it that's revolves around the ideas of your two's discussion: Ant Fugue The fundamental idea being that from a physical point of view, there's nothing unique about neurons firing in a certain pattern. A population of macroscopic organisms / actors in a computer could interact and produce the same patterns, given enough moving parts and the ability to reorganize itself in response to input.