I think worldview is all about simulation and maintaining state, it's not really about making associations, but rather maintaining some kind of up to date and imaginary state that you can simulate on top of, to represent the world. I think it needs to be a very dynamic thing which is a pretty different paradigm to the ML training methodology.

Yes, I view these things as foundational to freewill and imagination, but I'm trying to think more low level than that. Simulation facilities imagination and reasoning facilities motivation which facilities free will.

Are those things necessary for intelligence? Well it depends on your definition and everyone has a different definition ranging from reciting information to full blown consciousness. Personally, I don't really care about coming up with a rigid definition for it, it's just a word, I care more about the attributes. I think LLMs are a good knowledge engine and knowledge is a component of intelligence.