reduction to code

Cross-disciplinary science may be pointing toward the conclusion that folks (as well as the social systems that we work to support) are being short-changed whether or not we credit them with preconceived values. That's because like the self-assembled communities of which we are a part, our activities are in general guided by the fast operation of evolved modules that underpin the idea-rich public-relations modules which (thanks to the electronic mobility of ideas today) feed back into our pattern recognition only after the fact.

Reductions to code that fail to give folks credit for this adaptability shortchange them. Thus cartoonifications of people for better and for worse may be bound to fail, if used naively to guide the design of societal structures.

What examples pop up in your mind of judgement failures, concerning both values we might have expected folks to have, and values that we might have expected folks to not have? Examples of such failures might be worth listening to from folks with a wide range of vantage points on what worked, and what didn't.