Again, I don't see how your form of perception is any truer than a computer's. Past the eyes, vision is an entirely digital signal. Humans just have a more sophisticated functional relationship with their sensory input. We currently have a better capacity for making internal representations of external phenomena. Those perceptions are not real in any way. They just happen to be extremely useful in deciphering reality.

Here is a test I am curious about: Prove to me that you are perceiving something.

As for the idea of computers manipulating symbols, while humans just "perceive": Visual perception is actually very symbolic. If you look at the structures involved in the brain, there are specific bits for detecting straight lines, noses, motion etc. That information comes into (sub)consciousness in a symbolic way. For example, when you look at the edge of a table, your brain computes that there is a straight line and sends a "Straight line at position X" signal up to the next level of visual processing.

To say that humans don't manipulate symbols is actually a huge disservice to humans. Symbol manipulation is just too powerful of a system of information for the brain to not take part in. (off the top of my head) I can't think of any situation where not using symbol manipulation would somehow make a problem easier for an intelligence to solve.

Saying that computers must be different from humans because humans can't do math quickly is false. Universal Computation does not say all machines behave equally. The reason that computers can do math quickly is that math has some very specific algorithmic requirements. You can very trivially design efficient algorithms for a computer. In raw bits per second, your brain has a tremendous advantage over any computer, but there isn't the specific programming interface/circuitry required for that same efficient algorithm. Meditation is probably the best we can get as far a low level, algorithmic scale programming.

Computers routinely develop novel solutions to problems. In my spare time, I have written dozens of programs that have come up with solutions to many real world problems, such as locomotion in a 3D environment. Sure those solutions are in an abstract sense latent in the programming, but consider this. From maybe 200 lines of code, these programs can produce a nearly infinite number of unique solutions to a problem. Now, I don't doubt that a human could come up with set of solutions even more novel and numerous. But isn't that more of a difference of scale than quality?

I think there is a tendency to assume that a mysterious process must somehow be better than a conceivable process. Now, in an anecdotal sense, this is true. It's easier to conceive simple things rather than say the ingenuity of 4.5 billion years of evolution.