You (or someone else) could have gotten just as good of an explanation out of me by saying, "I don't understand how that's committing the MPF", so that's not really evidence in favor of trolls being valuable.

Sure, in principle, but what really happened was that I read the first few explanations (mostly by Elizier and Dennett) and thought, "Nah, that doesn't really work. How am I projecting anything? You are all ignoring consciousness!". When others then mentioned the position, I automatically dismissed it. Only by seeing people stubbornly bring up really bad arguments against reductionism did I finally snap, "C'mon! I'm on your side, but that's just stupid. If $belief about qualia were true, how would you ever know? What's the different anticipation here? ... Waitaminnit, what am I anticipating here?" and that unraveled the whole thing in the end.

(Noted, however. Need to ask more.)