@mw1525 Just wanted to say I loved reading your post about other simmer's experiences! I'm kind of on the borderline of rather sims are really "intelligent" or not, but I definitely hope so! It makes me feel so excited that my minions might have a brain and not just on my puppet strings.
I do think sims have their own personalities outside of just traits. For example, the sim I'm playing right now is absolutely obsessed with his bird. He has no animal lover trait, but will go watch and play with his bird everyday, will fill and clean its cage, while his girlfriend does none of that. And then when their house got smashed by a meteor, the first fire he rushed to extinguish was one burning near the birdcage... I was rofling at that point.
Also, every morning he tends to go outside and recycle the previous day's newspaper, it's like the first thing he does each morning. It's interesting to watch.
And I remember a sim who used to autonomously dumpster dive, no slob or anything on her. The thing is, she was dirt poor, I think she knew which is why whenever she was on a community lot with a dumpster she would dive. After she got rich the love for dumpsters ended lol. I never notice these things when I'm playing though, but now that I try to think about it they are all popping up.