What is Bateson levels of learning?

Bateson levels of learning is a concept in personal epistemology: What is true at one level of abstraction may not be true at another — check which level each claim operates at.

Example: A team lead says 'we need more process' and a senior engineer says 'process is killing us.' Both are right — the lead is talking about the behavior level (people are skipping code reviews), the engineer is talking about the capability level (rigid approval chains prevent experienced developers from shipping). The contradiction vanishes once you identify that each claim operates at a different level of the system. They aren't disagreeing about process. They're talking about two different things that both happen to use the word 'process.'

This concept is part of Phase 19 (Contradiction Resolution) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for contradiction resolution.