The hydraulic fluid does not interpret the pilot inputs as flight computers determine the actuators movement
If the pilot releases the stick, the aircraft keeps the pitch until the stick is moved again, then the flight computer moves the actuators without pilot input whatsoever.
Indeed!
Designers have used the best available means to make aircraft as easy as possible to handle, ever since the earliest days, whilst also allowing progressively higher performance. That's led successively to refinements in reversible (purely manual) control system with spring tabs, balance tabs, bob weights and the like; servo controls; and then the introduction of powered flight controls and associated artificial feel.
The nirvana is surely something such as described in the second quote above (although it's typically the flight path that's kept, not the pitch attitude as such), in which the pilot directs the flight path with the stick and the flight control system removes external and unwanted disturbances such as turbulence. This is what modern FBW seeks to achieve, but clearly it has to move the waggly bits on the wings and tail to do so, without a direct input from the pilot. This is nothing new; we've had yaw dampers moving the rudder without pilot command for over half a century!
FBW gives the opportunity to remove secondary effects such as (for example) roll due to sideslip, thus making tasks such as crosswind landings easier. Designers can now get much closer to providing pilots with handling qualities that they should have had decades ago, had the ability to provide them existed.
Turning to degraded modes; well, yes... If a Comet or 707 lost yaw damping, then the pilot had a very significantly greater problem on his/her hands than being in Alternate Law in an Airbus. And you'd better be careful not to reach the stall AoA in a VC-10, 1-11 or the like with a failed stick pusher.
FBW is still
relatively new technology in the big scheme of things. There are rough edges still, to be sure, and it's being refined just as previous generations of flight control systems were. But the fundamental principles are right.
P.S. Sorry - some duplication with Gums' post, with which I agree completely.