>Turing's imitation game is about making it difficult for a human to tell whether they are communicating with a computer or not. If a computer can trick the human, then... what? The computer is "thinking" ?

If you read his paper, Turing was trying to make a specific point. The Turing test itself is just one example of how that broader point might manifest.

If a thinking machine can not be distinguished from a thinking human then it is thinking. That was his idea. In broader terms, any material distinction should be testable. If it is not, then it does not exist. What do you call 'fake gold' that looks, smells etc and reacts as 'real gold' in every testable way ? That's right - Real gold. And if you claimed otherwise, you would just look like a mad man, but swap gold for thinking, intelligence etc and it seems a lot of mad men start to appear.

You don't need to 'prove' anything, and it's not important or relevant that anyone try to do so. You can't prove to me that you think, so why on earth should the machine do so ? And why would you think it matters ? Does the fact you can't prove to me that you think change the fact that it would be wise to model you as someone that does ?