What is abstraction layers?

Abstraction layers is a concept in personal epistemology: You can build schemas at different levels of abstraction each serving different purposes.

Example: You have a schema for how to run a one-on-one meeting (concrete: ask these questions, in this order, take notes here). You also have a schema for what makes feedback effective (mid-level: timely, specific, behavior-focused, tied to impact). And you have a schema for how trust compounds over repeated interactions (abstract: vulnerability plus consistency plus time yields psychological safety). All three operate simultaneously during the same meeting. The concrete schema tells you what to do. The mid-level schema tells you what quality looks like. The abstract schema tells you why any of it matters. When a one-on-one goes poorly, the fix almost never lives at the same abstraction layer as the symptom.

This concept is part of Phase 17 (Meta-Schemas) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for meta-schemas.