[mcguire]

Suppose that the system "learned" that marriage consisted of one man and one (or very rarely more) woman. Would that be "reality"? (In fact, I'd rather bet that it did, and I congratulate the authors on the wisdom of not advertising that fact.)

Various behavioral accidents can easily become embedded in culture, laws, and, yes, programs, at which point it stops mattering if they represent reality or "reality"; the real world will happily follow the cultural construction.