Ilbranteloth
Explorer
I still hold that they're different dials (and insist that what I'm playing is very much D&D, thankyoukindly ). That lore and rules influence each other is non-controversial. But consider that a Greyhawk wizard and a Realmsian wizard both use the default casting rules striaght out of the PHB; the lore provides flavor, but not extra mechanics (with, perhaps, some notable exceptions that are in practice optional add-ons). A wizard in Athas gets extra mechanics that come out of the lore, yes - but it's also trivially easy to take those mechanics and file off the serial numbers - i.e., strip away the lore - to port that into another setting. (Just as we've seen it's possible to do with the extra magic rules for wizards from Krynn.)
That said, I think we're getting at something like the same idea - that rules and lore are intertwined with each other (as, I would argue, they probably should be). I just look at it from a perspective that sees them as distinct streams, and that conflating them may produce undesirable results (like calling foul when a monster appears outside one of its listed environments). But if treating them as the same thing results in the game you most enjoy playing, then more power to you.
There's an interesting post on AngryGM that kind of talks about this very thing.
http://theangrygm.com/whats-a-meta-phor/