but how do you know that human intelligence can be made super? May be there's limitations to human intelligence, and simulating it will not get us a super intelligence.

> It's almost an absurdity of our existence that we're immersed and surrounded by it yet still can't model it.

Good point. However, i think a facet of intelligence is how well a model the being under question can create of the 'real' world. Humans do a very good job compared to most animals, but there's plenty of room for improvement since humans only have limited data to model with.

A machine can have input from basically an unlimited number of sensors, which include things a human mind doesn't cope with (like EM rays not of the visible spectrum). Therefore, i postulate that an AI that simulate humans won't beat an AI that's ground up built to take advantage of more data.