Generalization is the process of extracting general principles or concepts from specific examples, allowing you to reason about and handle new situations. It's like how ChatGPT learned to bullshit about anything based on being trained on a bunch of web pages.

How to use it in a sentence

• I tried to debug Jane's spaghetti code, but it was impossible to understand without some serious generalization and refactoring.

• After getting burned by the latest JavaScript framework, Bob decided to future-proof his skills by learning the generalizations behind programming paradigms instead of chasing trends.

If you actually want to learn more...

• Observational Inference: This article dives into predicting long-term effects from short-term engagement metrics, discussing techniques like regression, DAGs, and controlling for confounding factors to improve the generalization of your models.

• General and Surprising: Paul Graham muses on the nature of valuable insights, noting that the most profound are both general and surprising. He suggests that even small novel generalizations can lead to significant discoveries if you persevere in iterating on ideas.

• Lisp Resources: For those looking to truly generalize their programming skills, this curated list by Paul Graham provides a wealth of resources on Lisp, a language known for its elegance and ability to express high-level generalizations with minimal syntax.

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