It’s true that we are lacking good language to talk about it, as we already fail at successfully communicating levels of phantasia/aphantasia.
It’s fundamentally that this capability exists at all.
Strip it all down to I think therefore I am. That is very bizarre because it doesn’t follow that such a thing would happen. It’s also not clear that this is even happening at all, and, as an outside observer, you would assess that it isn’t. However, from the inside, it is clear that it is.
I don’t have an explanation for anyone but I have basically given up and accepted that consciousness is epiphenomenal, like looking through a microscope.
And clearly there is more to perception than informational content, unless you think that a copper wire transmitting video footage "perceives" in the same way as a human does -- which seems gargantuanly unlikely, given that how we transmit video is correlated with how our eyes work, so a priori you would not expect it to map onto "universal video footage" even if all matter were actually perceiving in some way.
Re: qualia. Let’s put it aside briefly. It isn’t inconceivable that a system could construct representations that don’t correspond to an “objective” reality, i.e. a sort of reality hologram, as a tool to guide system behavior.
The key question to ask is: “construct representations for whom?”, or, to put the challenge directly, “it’s not surprising that an observer can be fooled. It’s surprising that there is an observer to fool”.
The world, in the standard understanding of physics, should be completely devoid of observers, even in cases where it instantiates performers, i.e. the I/O philosophical zombie most people know well by now.
To circle back around on why this is difficult: you have in front of you a HUD of constant perceived experience (which is meaningful even if you’re being fooled, i.e. cogito ergo sum). This has, through acculturation, become very mundane to you. But, given how we understand the rules of the world, if you direct your rationality onto the very lens through which you constantly perceive, you will find a very dark void of understanding that seems to defy the systems that otherwise serve you exceptionally well. This void is the hard problem.