{
  "id": "high-level.abstraction",
  "term": "high level",
  "sense": "abstraction",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "arena": "emergence",
  "domain": "levels and abstraction",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "a view that sees only what persists across many instances, because the work of tracking differences has stopped and the model runs on fewer parameters.",
  "folk_gloss": "something that is broad and not detailed.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "model.representation",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "parameter.condition",
      "persist.continue",
      "general.broad"
    ],
    "interaction": "emergence",
    "novel_properties": [
      "general.broad"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Linux kernel maintains a single process abstraction across millions of hardware configurations, ignoring individual device quirks.",
      "domain": "computing"
    },
    {
      "text": "The GDP of the United States aggregated all economic activity into one number, erasing differences in labor, goods, and regions.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Linnaean taxonomy classifies millions of organisms into a few nested ranks, discarding developmental and genetic variation.",
      "domain": "biology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "high level"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — levels and abstraction"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-high-level.abstraction"
}