This bit was very interesting to me:
These models are “predictive” in the important sense that they perceive not just how things are at the moment but also anticipate how your sensory inputs would change under various conditions and as a consequence of your own actions. Thus:
Red = would create a perception of a warmer color relative to the illuminant even if the illumination changes.
My current pet theory of qualia is that there is an illusion that they are a specific thing (e.g. the redness of red) when in reality there are only perceived relations between a quale and other qualia, and a perceived identity between that quale and memories of that quale. But the sense of identity (or constancy through time) is not caused by an actual specific thing (the “redness” that one erroneously tries to grasp but always seems just beyond reach), but by a recurrence of those relations.
Why I like the quoted part is because it can be read as a predictive processing-flavoured version of the same theory. The illusion (that there is a reified thing instead of only a jumble of relationships) is strengthened by the fact that we not only recognize the cluster of qualia relationships and can correctly identify it, but furthermore predict how it will behave. Framing a “quale” as an ability to predict how a sense impression will change with varying sensory (or imaginary) impressions seems to make the definition both richer (it is not just an isolated flash of recognition of what’s in front of your eyes, but a set of predictions of how it might behave) and more coherent (different experiences of “redness” are tied together by the same quale because they could be “transformed” into each other while adhering to the changes that the quale “redness” says are applicable to itself).
Alternative explanation: everyone has qualia, but some people lack the mental mechanism that makes them feel like qualia require a special metaphysical explanation. Since qualia are almost always represented as requiring such an explanation (or at least as ineffable, mysterious and elusive), these latter people don’t recognize their own qualia as that which is being talked about.
How can people lack such a mental mechanism? Either
they simply have never done the particular kind of introspection that’s needed to realize the weirdness of qualia, or
there is a correct reductive explanation for qualia, and some people’s naive intuition just happens to naturally coincide with this explanation, or
same as 2 except that the explanation is (partially or wholly) incorrect. Presumably, sufficient introspection of the right type would move these people to either 1 or 2 (edit: or to the category of people who are puzzled about qualia, of course).
I don’t have a clue about the relative prevalences of these groups, nor do I mean to make a claim about which group you personally are in.