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Zoom out a little. Code can work perfectly fine technically yet have far-flung consequences in terms of business cases, human workflows, etc, etc.

So it's not as easy as saying "there's always a good reason" or "there's never a good reason". Make a fair effort at uncovering the reason and then it's a judgment call with insufficient data.

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Exactly. Code can pass 100% of tests--but the tests only cover what the test writer knows about. Code, especially old code, can encapsulate TONS of weird human and business specific behavior that you don't know about or doesn't seem sensible at a quick glance. Don't be so quick to dismiss old code--people rarely set out to build something thats shitty and code, especially code that seems completely asinine, is rarely just in there for the lulz.

Why shouldn't tests catch those far-flung consequences?

We are talking about how human user behaviour changes on a time scale of weeks or months. How would you test that?

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