On Renaming: From Constraint Failure to Signal Loss
Why the framework now appears under different names, and what stayed the same.
Readers who have followed the scientific essay series will notice that the framework previously introduced as the Constraint Failure Model now appears under a different name. As of April 2026, it is called the Signal Loss Model. The three mechanisms have been renamed in parallel.
The underlying logic is unchanged. The architecture, the citations, the clinical implications, and the predictions all remain intact. What changed is the language.
The conversions:
Constraint Failure Model (CFM) → Signal Loss Model (SLM)
Simulation Constraint Theory (SCT) → Untethered Cognition (UC)
Inflammaging Hypothesis (IH) → Neuroimmune Dysregulation (ND)
Reward Dysregulation and Incentive Salience (RDIS) → Pursuit-Reward Decoupling (PRD)
The compact form:
SLM = UC + ND + PRD
Why the change
The original names were the working vocabulary of an idea taking shape. They did their job during construction. As the framework matured and entered conversation with clinicians, researchers, and prospective guests, three problems with the old terminology became clear.
Constraint Failure implied that a system was breaking against its limits. The actual phenomenon is closer to a system losing fidelity in the signals it relies on to model itself and the world. Signal Loss names that directly.
Simulation Constraint Theory described the mechanism in terms of what was being constrained. Untethered Cognition describes what the person actually experiences: thought that has slipped its anchoring to lived, sensory, embodied reality.
Inflammaging Hypothesis understated the scope. The mechanism is not limited to age-related inflammatory drift. It is a broader pattern of neuroimmune signaling becoming dysregulated in ways that degrade cognitive and affective function. Neuroimmune Dysregulation names the full territory.
Reward Dysregulation and Incentive Salience was accurate but split its attention across two related phenomena without naming the dynamic that links them. Pursuit-Reward Decoupling names that dynamic directly: the gap that opens between wanting and liking, between the pursuit machinery and the reward signal it once tracked.
What this means for the existing essays.
The ten-part scientific series remains live. Each legacy essay now carries a header note flagging the terminology change and pointing readers to this post. Titles and body text will be revised in place over the coming weeks to reflect the current nomenclature. No essays are being withdrawn. No claims are being retracted.
