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This is an ancient phenomenon. I would posit that religions are its earliest manifestation.

Reality is a consensual process. Societies are continuously negotiating and renegotiating, amongst themselves, the borders of the map we call our worldview. Sometimes this process involves wiping the slate clean as we completely re-imagine the territory.

This is not a value judgment of this piece, or of this process as a whole.

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> Reality is a consensual process.

No. It is the exact opposite of that. Reality is what, when you stop consenting to it, does not go away.

Your delusions can't hurt you if you don't react to them. (Unfortunately, other people's delusions only depend on them reacting to them.)

You can refuse to buy into the conspiracy theory drivel that is so commonplace on the web these days. That does not make this sociopsychological phenomenon go away. In that sense, and by your definition, this phenomenon is now part of "reality."

> this sociopsychological phenomenon [as opposed to the events and things it purports to exist] is now part of "reality."

Yep. The reference is not the referent, the map is not the territory, etc, etc. A hallucination of a witch can't hurt you; a mob of hallucinating witch hunters very much can.

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