I believe there will certainly be participants uncomfortable with shifting sands,[...]
Indeed there will be... Some of us want local setting to be relatively stable and well defined; others want the big picture stable, but don't mind undefined bits in the local context... of the 30 or so people I've run FFG's Star Wars for, only three were comfortable flipping destiny to "find the right tool" or "Have remembered item X after all..."
and the harm done to Character => Situation => Setting is oblique (only arises in theorycrafting.)
That harm is dependent upon playstyles; it's VERY real harm to immersion for some to use mechanical labels instead of character perception expressed in player-comfortable real world units. I'm one of those - abstracting to zones outside active combat? Breaks my immersion, both as player and as GM. (Moreover, those are two very different forms of immersion.
Setting truths have most likely already been established prior to character creation, in the forms already discussed elsewhere.
And yet, for certain games, setting truths are nebulous and subject to change with minimal notice. (EG: John Wick's
Houses of the Blooded and
Blood and Honor... any "risk" can change anything established in prior risks. B&H is a better samurai game than L5R... but L5R is easier to find suitable players for.)
The problem with abstract analysis is that many seem to forget there are multiple playstyles...
Me, I loved Blood and Honor... but then I got a player with no respect for the bounds of good taste and the "lines and veils" type agreement for the campaign. When every person can use others' characters without consent, respect is the single most essential element.
Oh, I think I know where this is going, and it isn't somewhere good...
So... people who really know games agree with you, but all those newbs don't! Basically, appeal to authority, which doesn't really give us anything interesting to think about.
His generalization, while not documentation, is something I've seen a lot, but I'm not certain it's as much experience based, but age based.
I know I and my wife both want more consistency of setting than we did in the mid 1990's. 25+ years have changed our expectations. And, sadly, also our capabilities, for maintaining continuity. It's hard to disentangle the gaming experience element from the older player element.