That intuitively makes sense to me for everything except higher-level goal selection. If someone works at an NGO instead of FAANG because they want to do good for the world, how can that be explained in terms of prediction? If someone minimizes consumption to reduce global warming, how did prediction result in them caring about global warming? I picked those examples on purpose, because they run against some core instincts. Maybe they’re predicting what maximizes peer approval, which optimizes other outcomes too? (Jk :D )

You might enjoy 'On Intelligence' by Jeff Hawkins to learn more about this hypothesis. (It's an older book / theory at this point but still worth reading IMHO)

Yup, known as predictive coding/free energy principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding as one of leading theories for human consciousness

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6363942/

which is very close as to say that intelligence is learning [from mis-prediction], a subject of cybernetics - common machinery across the scales and instances - using a model (brain in case of animals, model/embedding in case of computer, DNA in case of evolution through natural selection) a prediction (which for example in case of evolution is the next generation) is made, and based on the error of that prediction the model is updated for the generation of the next prediction (in case of evolution the DNA of the best fit is the model to be used in the next iteration).

Or prediction is intelligence.

I think we need a more rigorous definition to go beyond tautology

Yep, prediction of what needs to be done.