Over four hundred years, Britain's legal code carried a single, costly blind spot. In the year 927, King Athelstan set the threshold for capital punishment at twelve pence—the price of an ox. By 1801, that twelvepence had become worthless; the same law meant that thirteen-year-old Andrew Benning was executed for stealing a spoon. The monetary value had deflated by roughly two hundred fold, but the inherited legal concept hadn't budged. LessWrong essayist Bruce Middleton calls this a bug in the human software of inherited concepts: the tendency for institutions to calcify around once-sensible rules, blind to the changing conditions underneath them. The law wasn't repealed until 1827. It's a stark reminder that systems designed for one era can become lethal when the world transforms around them.

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