Pareto’s Unthinking Populace (PUP)

Christopher Rath

2003-04-30

Pareto’s Law is the 80/20 rule; formulated by Vilfredo Pareto.  Pareto’s Law was "…derived from his observation that 20% of the peapods in his garden yielded 80% of the peas.  He later found ample confirmation that the same 20:80 ratio applied in many situations where a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect. Applied to meetings, the Pareto Principle would suggest that 80% of decisions come from 20% of meeting time." (from NewsScan Daily's Honorary Subscriber archives).  Applied to people, the law would suggest that 20% of people do 80% of the thinking—and if you're only thinking 20% of the time I would assert that you are not really thinking; hence, the "unthinking" moniker.

As I get older, I find myself more and intolerant of the 80% of people who don't think.  Members of the PUP are easily identified in most instances, using a set of litmus tests.  Passing any one of these tests indicates that an individual is probably part of the PUP.  Passing more than one of the tests indicates a high degree of probability that the individual doesn’t think.

Members of the PUP often exhibit the following behaviours:

• believe what they read in The National Enquirer and other such grocery store checkout rags
• vote for a candidate because he says he’s a Christian
• believe that "changing to healthy eating habits" means switching to artificially sweetened soft drinks and Olestra cooked snacks instead of traditional sugar and fat based junk food
• go into a fast food restaurant and order a double-burger, extra-sized fries, and a diet soda in the belief that the diet soda somehow makes a real difference
• search the pharmacy shelves for sugar-free vitamins for the kids ("to cut down on their sugar intake"), and then send Twinkies in their lunch to school
• tell the customer that having a choice between 5 items that cost $1.25 each is better than a choice between 2 items that don’t cost anything
• use the word Pareto as a noun, as in "plot a Pareto of that"
• chew gum with their mouth open---as I have observed and interacted with people who chew gum, I have come to the conclusion that individuals who do not have the personal discipline to chew gum with their mouth closed are also part of Pareto's Unthinking Populace