How intelligent do you want Sims to be?

you seem to be mistaking realism with a good AI. one thing is your sim being able to differentiate choices, to behave according to their personality, to do things they like autonomously or interact with other sim according to their situations and stuff which would be the ideal thing on a life simulator. unless sims developed ex machina kind of AI, there's nothing for you to worry about. there won't be any amount of realism on their AI to reach the level you seem to be describing. and all the woohoo interactions would be the same because it's still a preset animation, not an auto generated interaction.

i want smarter sims than the ones in ts4. sims 1 was a great example, although for today's standards some parts of their AI is quite primitive (like not being able to get out of the pool without ladders) i think it was very well coded and researched. the creator of the sims & the old maxis also read lots of psychology and other genre books to be able to make a decent AI that could fit in a life simulator.

I want sims to be smart enough to care for themselves and interact with other sims in a way that makes sense. By that last part, I mean I don't want sims to have a friendly chat after they just had a fight with that sim. I also would like for sims to have an emotion system that makes sense (with the current emotion system, a sim could be sad after losing a family member but be happy the next moment just because she looked at a painting).

Normally I don't care, because I have free will off. But when playing an asylum challenge, where free will is required, it becomes apparent that the Sims 4 sims are perfectly capable to survive on their own, no player input at all required. That kinda defeats the purpose of a game. (Granted, for the most part their actions seemed silly, but they always managed to avoid starving.)

Actually, I would love my sims to be able to develop common sense & street smarts. They don't need more intellect smarts.

I still remember my sim going out in the depths of winter to play with clay and standing there with it till they froze to death. As much as I love seeing mr grim reaper, I'd prefer seeing smarter sims.

I will always want smarter sims but sims are only as smart as the current AI system that is available. :)

Smart enough to take of their needs if they are yellow.

As in TS2 smarter. That's the baseline, feel free to go up from there.

Need to be smarter, TS4 sims is the least smart just the other day I found a Neat Sim trying to clean a trashcan while she herself has a green fume coming out of her armpit.

I don´t know what they were talking about "smarter sims", but the sims in sims 4 are incredibly dumb. It´s a miracle they survive taking a shower as it requires doing two things at once, breathing and showering.