To each his own. Comparing his ideas to software development would not be my first instinct, but I don't think level of abstraction is what he was going for. A closer analogy would be where there are many different implementations of an interface that run concurrently and then have their many outputs fused back into one single output. But that reads more awkwardly than the way Lem said it :)
I forgot to type it in that reply (hence redundant 'understand'), but also something as common as discussion. If you talk with a pedantic person he might be 100% accurate but prevent it from moving forward. This is called obstruction. What Lem was saying is obviously true, definitions of different level remain in use. Because they're useful.
I like Lem but sometimes his complex grammar and vocabulary doesn't add any value. I think it's better to describe (relatively) simple things in simple language. Lem tended to phrase everything that way.
To each his own. Comparing his ideas to software development would not be my first instinct, but I don't think level of abstraction is what he was going for. A closer analogy would be where there are many different implementations of an interface that run concurrently and then have their many outputs fused back into one single output. But that reads more awkwardly than the way Lem said it :)