It’s not so much that there’s anything mysterious you can discover through intense introspection or meditation. There might be, but I haven’t found it.
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.
The thing is that when you say “that capability”, I don’t quite know what you mean. The fact that we perceive inner processings of our mind isn’t any more surprising than that we perceive the outer world, or that a debugger is able to introspect its own program state. Continuous introspection has led me to realize that “qualia”, or “what it’s like to be X”, emotions and feelings, are just perceptions of inner phenomena, and that when you pay close attention, there is nothing more to that perception than its informational content.
What do you mean "perceive"? Why are there these "inner feelings" at all? They are not physical, and we can easily imagine a being that does not have them -- thus the whole p-zombie thought experiment. You're saying "qualia ... are just perceptions", and yes, that's the whole point. Defining qualia as qualia does not explain away the problem.
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.
I wouldn’t contend that it’s interesting or not that, or even if, “you” perceive the “inner processings of your own mind”.
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.
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.