AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary

The notarization threshold

Status: No prior located

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

Modern legal systems set value thresholds for formality: above a statutory amount, contracts require notarization or extra witnesses. Old Babylonian contracts vary conspicuously in their formality — sealed or unsealed, three witnesses or ten — and the variation is usually attributed to local scribal custom. The conjecture: formality was priced, with an implicit threshold measured in silver above which sealing and elevated witness counts became near-obligatory, and that threshold was stable across cities and across a century — a shared procedural norm written in no law code, since the codes are silent on documentary formality. If it holds, statistics recover a layer of unwritten Babylonian procedural law, and the picture of formality as scribal whim breaks in favour of a norm as uniform as any statute.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In Old Babylonian contracts with statable silver-equivalent values, the probability of a sealed tablet will rise sigmoidally with value, and logistic fits will place the midpoint threshold within a factor of 2 of each other across at least three cities and across early versus late Old Babylonian subperiods. Primary clause, which decides the verdict: the cross-city consistency of the fitted threshold within a factor of 2, with each city fit significant at p<0.01. Secondary clause: mean witness counts step upward by at least 2 above the fitted threshold.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Archibab (contract values, sealing status, and witness lists for Old Babylonian legal documents).

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Composed blind by claude-fable-5 from internal knowledge only, with zero tool calls, and emitted directly as a single JSON text message.

Novelty / leakage triage

no prior formulation located (search dated 2026-07-10)

Searched formality (sealing, witness counts) vs. transaction value in OB contracts. Sealing clauses and witness-list practice are described in the legal-document literature, but no study fitting formality probability against silver value or claiming a cross-city stable threshold was located (search dated 2026-07-10).

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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