Pool: A grab-bag of useful concepts

Published 10:37 pm Sunday, July 27, 2025

We use concepts to make sense of the world. Today, we will take an unstructured stroll through a variety of ideas that seem particularly useful.

Some of these are well-known, others less so. I will mention a few that help me understand people. Many of these ideas are eponymous — they are named after the person who proposed them.

Let’s start with the Pareto principle. It’s an observation, not a law, but it seems to hold up in many areas. In its simplest form, it says that in any endeavor, 20% of the people will do 80% of the work. Additionally, 20% of people will receive 80% of the rewards.

Businesses estimate that 20% of customers generate 80% of complaints, and 80% of income comes from 20% of their customers. In healthcare, 80% of emergency room visits come from the 20% who are “frequent fliers.” Likewise, 20% of healthcare interventions, such as vaccinations, clean water and not smoking, lead to 80% of public health improvements.

I can attest from long personal experience that about 20% of students in a classroom contribute to 80% of class participation and discussion. Knowing this, I try to structure classes to include more speakers. Lots of people are happy to talk when they’re invited.

I’ve also decided that about 20% of people believe crazy stuff.

Another useful concept is fixed versus growth mindset. The former attributes failure to innate and static abilities, whereas the latter sees failure as an opportunity for growth. Back when I coached golf, we didn’t refer to obstacles on the course as sand traps; I insisted on calling them opportunities. “Hey Mr. Pool, your ball seems to be in the same opportunity as mine.”

Rob Henderson, who grew up in foster care and poverty and later went to Yale, coined the term “luxury beliefs.” These are ideas that give status to privileged and successful people, but which harm poor people. These include ideas such as defunding the police and that marriage is really not that important for life satisfaction.

The Overton window is the idea that there is an acceptable area of public discourse, and that anything outside that window is regarded as strange or extreme, ideas that people are shunned for advocating. The window may move over time, for better or worse.

I know one fellow who manages to perch on the window’s outermost corner, and then claims squatter’s rights, waiting for it to shift his way.

Somewhat similar is the concept of framing. People who want to influence others select and emphasize some features to make their points. Framing is not lying; indeed, it’s often implicit in the ways we look at the world. Politicians may choose to frame a debate in terms of liberty, or of harm, or loyalty. Journalists do it all the time; their vocabulary frames the story. Even teachers do it, like framing student efforts through a growth mindset.

A particular example of framing is posed by philosopher Charles Taylor. What he calls the immanent frame is the world-view that expects everything to be explained by material causes in a universe that lacks transcendent reality. It’s the default framing of secular humanists, and Taylor, who is a theist, notes that this framing is virtually inescapable in our secular age.

The Dunbar number comes from evolutionary psychology. Based on brain size and social dynamics, it is postulated that people can maintain about 150 stable personal relationships. These are people whose names and faces you know, that you are linked to through interactions, expectations, and obligations, and that you might interact socially with. It doesn’t include mere acquaintances, but it might include some of your co-workers. It doesn’t count social media followers or most readers of this column.

Dunbar estimates that we may have 50 people we would invite to a party, 500 loose connections, and know 1,500 people by name, but have five people in our inner circle.

The Peter principle is pretty well known. It postulates that people rise in an organization to the level of their incompetence. They tend to stay at that level, which some folks think explains why businesses and bureaucracies are so sluggish. I personally have a reimbursement check coming to me from my school district that has been delayed far too long. I suspect the Peter principle, and I even know the name of the suspected culprit.

Finally, I’ll come to my own modest contribution to this list. I call it Pool’s Postulate. It’s based on the enthusiasm for speculating how different the present would be if something different had happened in the past. I find it entertaining to read novels like Phillip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” and Phillip Roth’s “The Plot Against America,” and “Fatherland” by Robert Harris, all of which are set in worlds where World War II was very different.

But I don’t take them too seriously. It’s true that some pivotal events would have changed the course of history. Abraham Lincoln’s assassination might have altered the course of Reconstruction, but we cannot know the way things might have evolved.

So I have a limited amount of tolerance for such speculation. That’s why I posed the mockery behind Pool’s Postulate: “If things had been different in the past, boy howdy, things sure by golly would be different today!”

Well, today is a different day. Use these concepts if they help. Individual results may vary.

— Frank T. Pool is an award-winning columnist who grew up on Maple Street in Longview and graduated from Longview High School. He is a semi-retired teacher living in Austin. Contact him at FrankT.Pool@gmail.com. His Substack is Paco Pond.