Reply to post:

@Charles 9

I'm trying to picture an entity that while lacking any kind of intuition and spontaneous learning is at the same time indistinguishable from a human.

Cognition is embodied. My entire being is going into producing this post. A machine would have to simulate not just human language, but the human mind/brain that houses the language organ and the body that goes along with that mind and the form of life that body is supposed to have enacted. The Turing Test therefore requires the machine to have superhuman mimicking abilities therefore the Singularity is an event that precedes any machine passing the Turing Test. What do you think?

Also: English, Asian, African ? :) One of these things is not like the other two.