Where did NL come from?

The Noticing Loop didn't arrive fully formed. It wasn't designed from a theory and then filled with examples. It developed gradually — one question, difference and revision at a time. Much of that development has been preserved. There is now a working record of around 480,000 words, containing the questions, half-formed thoughts, wrong turns, challenges, revisions and occasional moments when something suddenly seemed to fit. This is part of the provenance of NL. Not proof that the framework is right. Evidence of how it became what it currently is.

It didn't start as NL

I didn't set out to invent a framework. The early questions were much more ordinary. Why does something catch our attention? Why does one person notice something another doesn't? What happens before we consciously decide to investigate? How do experts become capable of seeing differences novices can't? Why do we stop thinking about one thing and move to another? One question exposed another. Ideas that initially seemed separate began to connect. Noticing led to models of normal. Models of normal led to difference and resolution. Following differences consumed resources. Finite resources required judgment. Judgment required comparison, thresholds and choices. Choices produced outcomes. Outcomes could change the receiver. And the changed receiver encountered whatever came next. Only gradually did something resembling the present framework emerge.

The wrong turns are part of the record

The provenance isn't a reconstruction of what I now wish I had thought. It contains ideas that didn't survive. Terms that were introduced and later abandoned. Claims that became smaller when they couldn't be defended at the resolution at which I'd made them. Questions that were banked and subsequently reopened. And ideas that changed when somone else supplied a difference I hadn't seen. A finished framework can make its development look inevitable. It wasn't. What NL is now makes some of the earlier steps look obvious. They weren't obvious when I was taking them.

Some of the early claims were much

stronger

Some early versions of the emerging framework made claims that I would not make today. They described the model as universal and as a description of how human decisions actually work. As the framework developed, I became increasingly careful about the difference between a useful representation of what we observe and a claim about the mechanism producing it. Some claims became smaller. Some were qualified. Some were abandoned altogether. The provenance preserves those earlier claims rather than quietly rewriting them.

Bank it — but don't lock it

One of the working practices that emerged during development was ‘banking’. When an idea seemed sufficiently useful and defensible for the current purpose, I could stop spending resources on it. Bank it. Move on. That didn't make it permanently true. It meant: Good enough for now. Sometimes a new question later exposed a problem with something I'd banked. Then we reopened it. Changed it. Occasionally discarded it. And banked a new representation. That remains the position today. NL itself is banked, not locked.

We tried it somewhere else

One of my ways of attacking an idea was to move it. Much of the thinking behind NL grew from questions about aviation, communication and training. So I deliberately took the emerging framework into very different domains. Sport. Expertise. Education. Creativity. Music. Emotion. Memory. Trust. Fraud and deception. Teamwork. Leadership. Negotiation. Responsibility and hindsight. Morality. Agency and free will. Relationships. Risk and uncertainty. AI. Everyday decisions. Each gave me different receivers, signals, pressures, resources, timescales and consequences. The question wasn't: Can we make NL fit this too? It was: What happens to NL when we put it here? Does something stop working? Does an assumption become visible? Does a distinction disappear? Does the unit need changing? Does the resolution matter? Does an apparent similarity turn out to conceal a different mechanism? Does the framework need to change? The domains became stress tests. Sometimes they supported an existing representation. Sometimes they exposed a difference that made me revise it. Sometimes they showed that I’d made a claim too broadly. And importantly: Surviving many different domains does not prove that NL is universal. It gives us more evidence about where the framework appears useful — and more opportunities to discover where it isn't.

Other receivers matter

NL hasn't developed in isolation. Ideas from psychology, philosophy, human factors, communication, education, decision-making and other fields have provided differences against which the developing framework could be tested. So have conversations with practitioners and experts. Sometimes another person's work supported something I was already thinking. Sometimes it supplied language for something I couldn't yet express. Sometimes it revealed that an apparently new idea had a long intellectual history. And sometimes another receiver simply said: Have you thought about this? and changed what became available to me. NL doesn't become stronger by pretending those influences don't exist. They are part of its provenance.

Functional resemblance isn't identity

This has required some discipline. An NL idea may resemble something from another field. That doesn't necessarily mean they are describing the same mechanism. Two ideas can perform similar explanatory work without being identical. So throughout the provenance work I've tried to preserve an important distinction: FUNCTIONAL RESEMBLANCE ≠ MECHANISTIC IDENTITY ≠ PHENOMENOLOGICAL IDENTITY. In simpler terms: ‘Looks similar’ isn't the same as ‘is the same.’ That applies when comparing NL with existing theories. And it applies when making claims about what may be happening inside the receiver. Where I don't know, I have tried not to pretend I do.

The record isn't the truth either

There is another complication. The provenance record tells us what was written at the time. That makes it valuable. But it doesn't give us perfect access to what happened inside my head. Memory is reconstructed. Language is incomplete. A thought may have existed before I wrote it down. An apparently new idea may have been influenced by something encountered years earlier and forgotten. So the provenance can support claims such as: By this date, this idea was explicitly present. But it cannot always support: This was the exact moment the idea first existed. That distinction matters. The record is evidence. It isn't omniscience.

Why preserve all this?

Because NL asks other people to examine their representations. It seems reasonable that NL should expose its own. If I say: Build the model. But remain open to questioning the model. you should be entitled to ask: How did you build this one? What changed? What was rejected? What influenced it? Where did the terminology come from? Which ideas are well supported? Which remain hypotheses? Where might hindsight be making the development look tidier than it really was? The provenance gives us somewhere to look.

Does provenance prove NL is true?

No. A 480,000-word record of developing a bad idea would still be a 480,000-word record of developing a bad idea. Volume isn't validation. Nor does consistency prove truth. The provenance supports a narrower claim: NL is the product of a sustained process of questioning, comparison, revision and reconstruction, and I have a substantial record with which to examine that process. Whether the resulting framework is useful is another judgment. That's one reason I'm putting it in front of other receivers.

My current version of “true”

At this moment, I believe NL is a sufficiently useful and defensible representation to put into the world. That's a deliberately limited claim. Not: This is how humans work. Not: NL is THE model. But: This is a model I currently have reasonable grounds to keep using and testing. New evidence may change it. Others may expose things I've missed. Using NL may reveal that part of it doesn't work. Good. That would become part of the provenance too.

Provenance continues

There isn't a neat line at the bottom of the development record saying: NL FINISHED. This website is itself another step. For the first time, the framework is being deliberately exposed to a much wider range of receivers. Some will ignore it. Some may find it useful. Some may disagree. Some may find holes. And occasionally, someone may notice a difference that changes the framework. That's not a threat to NL. That's how NL got here.