Briefly, that history of man

“He further argues that the ability of Sapiens to cooperate in large numbers arises from its unique capacity to believe in things existing purely in the imagination, such as gods, nations, money and human rights.†

But not purely: what U would really want is “structured imagination,” i.e. imagination that may be used to follow certain rules but not others. This is the whole point: pure imagination can only be of significance when we have pure VR.

Cf. Math. Chess. Mass. Mess.

And even then we have Taylor’s contention.

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind