[jebarker]

That's a good point. But re: not anthropomorphizing, what's wrong with errors, mistakes or inaccuracies? That's something everybody is familiar with and is more accurate. I'd guess most people have never actually experienced a hallucination anyway, so we're appealing to some vague notion of what that is.

[lmm]

> what's wrong with errors, mistakes or inaccuracies?

They're not specific enough terms for what we're talking about. Saying a lion has stripes is an error, mistake, or inaccuracy. Describing a species of striped lions in detail is probably all those things, but it's a distinctive kind of error/mistake/inaccuracy that's worth having a term for.

[threeseed]

> I'd guess most people have never actually experienced a hallucination anyway

I actually think most people have.

Every time you look at a hot road and see water that mirage is a form of hallucination.

[ai_]

Except mirages are real optical phenomena that can be captured by a camera. Hallucinations are made entirely by your brain and cannot be captured by an external observer.

[mdp2021]

> what's wrong with [']errors['], [']mistakes['] or [']inaccuracies[']?

"To sort the files by beauty, use the `beautysort` command."