>>here is the total lack of intellectual curiosity that wants to shoot down an entire line of thinking for reasons that apparently can’t be articulated.

It's the same energy as watching a Joe Rogan podcast where yet another guest goes "well they say there's global warming yet I was cold yesterday, I'm not saying it's fake but really we should think about that". These questions about AI and our brains aren't meant to stimulate intellectual curiosity and provoke deep interesting discussions - they are almost always asked just to pretend the AI is something that it's not - a human like intelligence where since our brains also work "kinda like that" it means it must be the same - and the nearest equivalence is how my iron heats water so in essence it's the same as my stomach since it can also do this.

>>the question that you simply refuse to contemplate

I don't refuse to contemplate it, I just think the answer is so painfully obvious the question is either naive or uninformed or antagonistic in nature - there is no "machine intelligence" - it's not a religious conviction, because I don't think you need one to realise that a calculator isn't smart for adding together numbers larger than I could do in my own head.