You are absolutely right about many of your points: Intelligence is not about crying when granny dies (single level stimulus and response, much like chatterbots), it's about estimating the distance that her death separates you from your primary objective and responding to the change accordingly.

When the largest chasm that separates man and animal is that of rational thought, it's absolutely silly to model the animalness of a man. Why, indeed, not go to the core of intelligence. Why not forget about maintaining proper humanoid interaction and simply emulate the basic definitions of knowledge gathering and processing?

I have been more or less obsessed with the idea of such emulations for the past 6 years, and have been fine tuning a design which encompasses these ideals. And believe me, the kind of raw logic that you are exhibiting will be largely ignored by the general public who dream and read more than they think (just because someone printed it, doesn't mean it's right. It means that the author made a buck). These people are by and large, the biggest problem with creative AI designers today.

If you do want to create an intelligent machine, then do not believe the academic elitists. You do not need to read obtuse books on cognitive neuro science or understand any element of the human brain, as they will not put you any closer to developing an intelligent machine, but only a very poor model of a human mind at best. Focus on the nature of intelligence and the causes of action.

All you need to do is sit quietly with yourself and watch yourself think, which it seems you have done.

----------------
Tips that I have found very helpful
----------------
1. Always build test programs. Always.
2. Stupid people tend to answer more questions than smart people.
3. There are no facts, just suggestions.
4. Realize that the human brain is a product of a genetic algorithm, and that the algorithm's criteria for creation was survival, not intelligence.
5. Disputes over religion, souls, and reincarnation are never logical arguments, due to lack of proof.
6. Since such actions such as dreaming, loving, crying, hating, and being sad can be quantified, they can be manifested in a computer that has been given an ability to produce such an action either by programmers or itself.
7. Given the ability and the motivation, AI can pose a serious risk to humanity. But would it really be all that bad to replace humanity with something better?