I “clearly” see lots of dots appear and disappear. It feels direct and unassailable that I am seeing dots. But I never really see a single dot appear and disappear. (Without making a very selective effort.)

Clues like that suggest that the qualia answer has mechanistic explanation. The signal saying that we see something, directly and clearly, and actually seeing something, are separable.

Which is true for recognition of a previous experience (Deja vu), knowing (unquestioning belief), etc.

We experience certainties and experiences we deem direct, that we often attribute to reality, but the measure of certainty and directness themselves are just other signals only approximating or filling in (usefully confabulating) what we think they say.

Our experiences are absolutely full of invisible simplifications, internally created opaque illusions, of not only information, but meta-information.

They work as efficiencies because by design we do not have the natural ability to perceive or question them. No natural inclination to seperate seemingly deep experience from actually sparse internal sensory and meta status representations, or representations from reality (whether internal or external).

I'd like to take this opportunity to share a couple of my own, much less impressive, tools that explore similar ideas:

https://susam.net/cfrs.html (Turtle graphics but with only 6 commands)

https://susam.net/fxyt.html (Inspired by Tixy but stack-based with 36 instructions)

To see the demos, click or type '?' and then scroll down to the bottom of the manual.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

https://aesort.com/Turing-Drawings/#2,16,1,6,3,0,11,0,1,5,1,...