Part One: Umberto Eco's Antilibrary, or How We Seek Validation, Chapter 5: Confirmation Shmonfirmation! Summary and Analysis

Summary

Conformation was defined as making generalized conclusions from a single experience or many experiences. That this can lead to wrong conclusions was shown with the turkey example in which the turkey lived just fine for a thousand days but was killed the day before Thanksgiving. Another example given was sleeping on a railroad track one night without harm. This did not mean that on any other night, a train would not come along and cause a great deal of harm.

Humans have developed conformation as part of our survival mechanism. Experiments with children have shown that we selectively generalize from limited information, and in primitive environments, this worked fine. However, the world of today has developed...