Boiling Frog Quotes

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

I've heard that people stand in bad situations because a relationship like that gets turned up by degrees. It is said that a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water. Place him in a pot and turn it up a little at a time, and he will stay until he is boiled to death. Us frogs understand this.

Did you know that if you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump out? But, if you put one in cold water and heat it slowly, he’ll stay in. And boil to death. He won’t even try to get out. He won’t even know he’s dying. Until it’s too late. Men are a lot like frogs.

Do you know what happens, Etienne,” says Madame Manec from the other side of the kitchen, “when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?” “You will tell us, I am sure.” “It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put the frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly bring it to a boil? You know what happens then?” Marie-Laure waits. The potatoes steam. Madame Manec says, “The frog cooks.

If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out. But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn't figure out what going on until it's too late. Boiled frog. It's just a metter of working by slow degrees.

Floating in this cosmic jacuzzi, we are all like frogs oblivious to the water starting to boil. No one flinches. We all float face-down.

On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don't know if it's true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.

Years ago, in a motivational seminar by the master, Zig Ziglar, I heard a story about how mediocrity will sneak up on you. The story goes that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he will sense the pain and immediately jump out. However, if you put a frog in room-temperature water, he will swim around happily, and as you gradually turn the water up to boiling, the frog will not sense the change. The frog is lured to his death by gradual change. We can lose our health, our fitness, and our wealth gradually, one day at a time. It might be a cliché, but that’s because it is true: The enemy of “the best” is not “the worst.” The enemy of “the best” is “just fine.

If you put a frog in some warm water and slowly turn up the heat, he'll stay there until he boils. Kind of like people. We're too lazy to change so we'll just keep doing what we're doing until it's too late.

It's like boiling a frog

You can’t step directly into a cold stream of water, it’s too shocking, too brutal, but if you get there gradually, you hardly notice it; it’s like boiling a frog in reverse.

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

There is a quasi-scientific fable that if you can get a frog to sit quietly in a saucepan of cold water, and if you then raise the temperature of the water very slowly and smoothly so that there is no moment marked to be the moment at which the frog should jump, he will never jump. He will get boiled. Is the human species changing its own environment with slowly increasing pollution and rotting its mind with slowly deteriorating religion and education in such a saucepan?

Did you know that if you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump out? But, if you put one in cold water and heat it slowly, he’ll stay in. And boil to death. He won’t even try to get out. He won’t even know he’s dying. Until it’s too late. Men are a lot like frogs.” Excerpt From: Chase, Emma. “Tangled.” Omnific Publishing, 2013-05-21T05:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

we are not wired to make decisions about barely perceptible threats that gradually accelerate over time. We’re not so different from the proverbial frog that boils to death in a pot of slowly warming water.

If you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, the fucker will jump right back out. It knows it’s wrong, it hurts, it will kill him. But if you put him in a pot and slowly raise it up to boiling, he’ll stay. That’s what abuse is like. You might not even notice it’s happening at first. You’d brush it off as him having a bad day, you pissing him off. But then it starts getting worse in small ways until you’re in so deep and you’re so hot and your skin is peeling and you don’t know if you even remember you can jump anymore. That doesn’t make you weak. You got out of that shit, baby. That makes you stronger, a lot stronger, I think, than you even realize.

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined. Harpier cries ’Tis time, ’tis time. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

Double, double toil and trouble,” he chanted under his breath. “Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, in the caldron boil and bake. Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog …” He couldn’t recall what came next and abandoned the

If a frog is placed into a pot of boiling water it will immediately try to jump out; but if it is placed into a pot of cool water that is gradually heated until boiling, it will stay put and never try to jump out.

You know that saying about a frog in a pot? How you can put a frog in boiling water and it’ll jump straight out, but if you put a frog in tepid water and slowly increase the heat, it’ll adjust and adjust until it dies?

Do you know anything about frogs?" "Frogs?" "Yes, various biological studies have shown that if a frog is placed in a container along with water from its own pond, it will remain there, utterly still, while the water is slowly heated up. The frog doesn't react to the gradual increase in temperature, to the changes in its environment, and when the water reaches the boiling point, the frog dies, fat and happy. On the other hand, if a frog is thrown into a container full of already boiling water it will jump straight out again, scalded, but alive!" Olivia doesn't quite see what this has to do with the destruction of the world. Igor goes on: "I was like that boiled frog. I didn't notice the changes. I thought everything was fine, that the bad things would just go away, that it was just a matter of time. I was ready to die because I lost the most important thing in my life, but instead of reacting, I sat there bobbing apathetically about in water that was getting hotter by the minute.

Oh, my God, my darling, how did you survive this man? “I guess it’s like the frog in boiling water, right?” Nisha says. “No marriage starts off bad. I guess by the time you realize how weird it’s gotten you’re up to your neck.

Like sandpaper, the psychopath will wear away at your self-esteem through a calculated mean-and-sweet cycle. Slowly, your standards will fall so low that you become grateful for the utterly mediocre. Like a frog in boiling water, you won’t even realize what happened until it’s far too late. Your friends and family will wonder what happened to the man or woman who used to be so strong & energetic.

It is understandable you would want to come back as yourself into a wonderland with the sharpness of color of the Queen of Hearts in a newly opened pack of cards. But coming back as yourself is resurrection. It is uncommon. It may even be greater than the scope of mathematics. We cannot talk with definition about our souls, but it is certain that we will decompose. Some dust of our bodies may end up in a horse, wasp, cockerel, frog, flower, or leaf, but for every one of these sensational assemblies there are a quintillion microorganisms. It is far likelier that the greater part of us will become protists than a skyscraping dormouse. What is likely is that, sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents, or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate. You will be in Hades, the staying place of the spirits of the dead. You will be drowned in oblivion, the River Lethe, swallowing water to erase all memory. It will not be the nourishing womb you began your life in. It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms, because they are the foundation of all forms. In your reanimation you will be aware only that you are a fragment of what once was, and are no longer dead. Sometimes this will be an electric feeling, sometimes a sensation of the acid you eat, or the furnace under you. You will burgle and rape other cells in the dark for a seeming eternity, but nothing will come of it. Hades is evolved to the highest state of simplicity. It is stable. Whereas you are a tottering tower, so young in evolutionary terms, and addicted to consciousness.

According to a much-traveled analogy, if we put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately hop out. But put the frog in water that’s at room temperature and heat it slowly, and the creature will stay there until it boils to death. Put him in a lethal environment suddenly, and he will escape. But introduce the danger gradually, and he will never notice. The truth is that the dangers to which we are most vulnerable are generally not the sudden, dramatic, obvious ones. They are the ones that creep up on us, that are so much a part of our environment that we don’t even notice them.

Because six billion of us are pursuing an evolutionarily unstable strategy, we’re fundamentally attacking the very ecological systems that keep us alive. Just like the goat that refuses to suckle its kids, we’re in the process of eliminating ourselves. Think about the time line Charles drew in his talk about the boiling frog. For the first six thousand years, the impact of our evolutionarily unstable strategy was minimal and confined to the Near East. Over the next two thousand years, the strategy spread to Eastern Europe and the Far East. In the next fifteen hundred years, the strategy spread throughout the Old World. In the next three hundred years, it became global. By the end of the next two hundred years—which is now—so many people were following the strategy that the impact was becoming catastrophic. We’re now about two generations away from finishing the job of making this unstable strategy extinct.

The only person you are competing with is the person you were yesterday

Remember that a falling apple taught us gravity, a boiling kettle brought us the steam engine, and the twitching leg of a frog opened up the train of thought and experiment which gave us electricity.

businesses lost after the recession, after Sandy, their retail corpses replaced by hotels and big box stores. The creep of wealth and whiteness that had slowly, steadily been frog boiling her hometown, pushing out and scattering families like her own.

Imagine you have a frog and you plop it into a pot of boiling water. What’s it going to do? It’s going to jump straight back out. However, if you put the frog in a pot of cool water, and slowly warm it up, the frog won’t notice until it is too late.   Similarly,

Blonde: A word sir, Have you got a cure For freckles? They come out all over In the summer. Mephistopheles: Ah, Summer speckles, Dotted like a tabby cat. Take an extract Of toad-tongue, Boil with frog spawn At dawn, And spread upon your skin When the moon is thin And waning.

bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.

You've heard of him haven't you?" "She may not have, I hadn't until last week." "Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog... Act four scene one, three witches at the cauldron no?

Our very human to simplify and seek one answer may explain our ongoing difficulty in recognizing impending synergy and acting before systems collapse. We are prone to accept death by a thousand little cuts, in which one degraded aspect of our environment or health becomes familiar and accepted as normal--and then another.

In 2012, I turned fifty-six. Hugh and his longtime girlfriend took me out to dinner. On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old. When I was a teenager, I looked at over-fifties with pity and unease: they walked too slow, they talked too slow, they watched TV instead of going out to movies and concerts, their idea of a great party was hotpot with the neighbors and tucked into bed after the eleven o’clock news. But—like most other fifty-, sixty-, and seventysomethings who are in relative good health—I didn’t mind it so much when my turn came. Because the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days. (I was spared that, at least, because most of my so-called good old days had been spent as a full-bore, straight-on-for-Texas drug addict.) I think for most people, life’s deceptive deliriums begin to fall away after fifty. The days speed up, the aches multiply, and your gait slows down, but there are compensations. In calmness comes appreciation, and—in my case—a determination to be as much of a do-right-daddy as possible in the time I had left. That meant ladling out soup once a week at a homeless shelter in Boulder, and working for three or four political candidates with the radical idea that Colorado should not be paved over.

The consolidation of power in the guise of public safety. It’s an age-old game that’s been played a thousand times throughout time on government stages large and small. The erosion of our rights is the slow death of freedom. We’re the frogs basking in the warm pan bath while the water boils us to death, and some of us don’t even realize it.

Do not sneer at the humble beginnings, the heaving table or the flying tambourine, however much such phenomena may have been abused or simulated, but remember that a falling apple taught us gravity, a boiling kettle brought us the steam engine, and the twitching leg of a frog opened up the train of thought and experiment which gave us electricity.

We are experiencing a cultural collapse. The very same collapse that was experienced by the Plains Indians when their way of life was destroyed and they were herded onto reservations. The very same collapse that was experiences by aboriginal people overrun by us in Africa, everywhere. For all of us, in just a few decades, shocking realities invalidated our vision of the world and made nonsense of a destiny that had always seemed self evident. The outcome: things fall apart. Order and purpose are replaced by chaos and bewilderment. People lose the will to live, become listless, violent, suicidal, addicted. The frog smiled for ten thousand years, as the water got hotter and hotter and hotter, but eventually when the water began to boil , the frog was dead.

Do you know what happens, Etienne,” says Madame Manec from the other side of the kitchen, “when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?” “You will tell us, I am sure.” “It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put the frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly bring it to a boil? You know what happens then?” Marie-Laure waits. The potatoes steam. Madame Manec says, “The frog cooks.” ==========

Well then, he said. What are you doing here? I am not sure. Liberty I suppose. I lived so long under constraints. You wonder why I grub about in the mud - it's what I remember from childhood. Barely ever wearing shoes - picking gorse for cordial, watching the ponds boiling with frogs. And then there was Michael, and he was - civilised. He would pave over every bit of woodland, have every sparrow mounted on a plinth. And he had me mounted on a plinth. My waist pinched, my hair burned into curls, the colour on my face painted out, then painted in again. And now I'm free to sink back into the earth if I like - to let myself grow over with moss and lichen. Perhaps you're appalled to think we are no higher than the animals, or at least, if we are, only one rung further up the ladder. But no, no - it has given me liberty. No other animal abides by rules - why then must we?

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows: Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

a transparent democratic process took place every few years in which they elected the Social Democrats, but as they slowly watched their rights and freedoms being eroded, and felt the long tentacles of the state rummaging around for any remaining tax kronor hidden in their underwear, did the Swedish people never once say “Enough is enough”? Or, were they like the proverbial frog in a pan of cold water, oblivious to the incremental temperature change as they were brought slowly to a rolling boil?

It was a reasonable argument. And for the past ten years things had only gotten worse. Blackouts, war, fifty-seven varieties of terrorists, water shortages, plagues. It reminded me of a story about frogs: if you put them in an open pot of water and turn on the burner, they just sit there and boil to death, because they’re not equipped to recognize and respond to gradual changes in water temperature. They could jump out at any time, but there never comes a time when their little brains judge it’s time to jump. So they cook. I

If you put a frog in water that is already boiling, it will jump right out from the sheer pain and collision of senses. But if you put a frog in water at room temperature, then steadily raise the heat one degree at a time until it is boiling, the frog will slowly but eventually die. Our culture–us–we’re that frog right now, thinking, This is nice and cozy, but the heat has been climbing. This book is me saying, Wait a minute. It’s starting to get a little warm in here. The values and pace of our culture, the speed at which it is moving, the demands and pressure we all collectively feel, the ethos of hustle injected into us all at birth–it’s boiling us alive. But we don’t notice it because it has happened steadily over the last century or so.

So what are you after, eh? Side of beef? Some chops?' 'Aye, sir. Whatever you fancy.' He licked his lips and listed his favorite dishes: plain pudding, lemon pickle, roast beef. Then he asked for his own particulars: tobacco and coltsfoot for his pipe, and some more comfrey for Her Ladyship's tea. 'And no green oils. Get a block of dripping and cook it plain.' It was true that the food in France had been a great hog potch of good and bad. One night on the road we were served a right mess of giblets, fishy smelling frogs' legs and moldy old cheese. But at Chantilly the fricassee of veal was so tender I'm not sure how they softened it. I could have eaten the whole pot it was that good, but instead had to watch Jesmire scraping off the sauce, whining all the time for a little boiled ham.

Sgt. Jack was a hard-ass teacher, but kids need hard-ass teachers sometimes. I know that might hurt your ears because things are different now. We are warned of the lasting effects of stress on children, and to compensate, parents strategize about how to make their children’s lives comfortable and easy. But is the real world always comfortable? Is it easy? Life is not G-rated. We must prepare kids for the world as it is. Our generation is training kids to become full-fledged members of Entitlement Nation, which ultimately makes them easy prey for the lions among us. Our ever-softening society doesn’t just affect children. Adults fall into the same trap. Even those of us who have achieved great things. Every single one of us is just another frog in the soon-to-be-boiling water that is our soft-ass culture. We take unforeseen obstacles personally. We are ready to be outraged at all times by the evil bullshit of the world. Believe me, I know all about evil and have dealt with more bullshit than most, but if you catalog your scars to use them as excuses or a bargaining chip to make life easier for yourself, you’ve missed an opportunity to become better and grow stronger. Sgt. Jack knew what awaited me as an adult. He was preparing me for the grip of life. Whether he knew it or not, the man was training me to be a savage.

If you put a frog in some warm water and slowly turn up the heat,” Elaine said, wetting her embroidery floss between her lips so she could thread it through a needle, “he’l stay there until he boils. Kind of like people. We’re too lazy to change, so we’l just keep doing what we’re doing until it’s too late.

This may seem absurd – after all, the motives are good.  But you may also wish to remember the parable of the cooked frog.  When dropped into boiling water, the frog jumped out and fled – scalded, but alive; when dropped into a slowly heating pot, the frog stayed put until it was too late.  And the cook had boiled frog for dinner.  It is rare for freedoms to be lost overnight.  Instead, they are traded away, piece by piece, until it is too late. -Professor Leo Caesius, Authority, Power and the Post-Imperial Era

Wasn’t there some belief about how if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump right out? But if you put it in cold water and turn up the heat gradually, it will allow itself to slowly cook to death?

He smiles. I sit a few feet away and watch as he unpacks the linen bag. “Torin packed this, not Rayna, so who knows what we’ll find.” “Eye of newt and toe of frog,” I mutter. “Wool of bat and tongue of dog.” He smiles, waiting for me to pick up the next verse. “Sorry. That’s all I know.” He props his arms on his knees. “‘Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,’” he continues, affecting a macabre tone, “‘lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing, for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.’” “Yum. Breakfast of champions. Is howlet an owl?” “It is indeed.” “And blind worm must be a snake?” “No. Blind worms are lizards with no legs.” “That makes sense. That’s why those were added separately—the lizard legs.” “No respectable brew is complete without them.” “There should be some soft ingredients in there for flavor balance, like butterfly wings and dove’s feathers.” His eyebrows rise. “You’d eat butterfly wings?” “Never. I don’t know why I said that. I love butterflies.” “A symbol of rebirth and resurrection, I might add.” “Subtle, Samrael. Real subtle.” I catch myself smiling. But if he’s good—if he’s really changed—then smiling is fine. Right?

You know about the frog and the pot of boiling water?” “That’s a myth. They hop out. They always hop out.

Now, every weeknight, in the time between the garage door grumbling and the kitchen door opening, she wonders if it was a trap all along or just a natural progression that happened so gradually she didn’t notice, if she’s the frog in water slowly building to a boil.

Just as in the parable of the boiling frog who does not perceive the gradual increase in the temperature of the water and is boiled alive, so we have by steady increments lost much of our liberty without realizing it. The works in this book cannot give that back; what they can do is to raise our consciousness of the many alternative paths we could have taken—and perhaps, if we have nerve enough, still can take.

There are also political reasons for increased pessimism. When I wrote the first Six Degrees, I did not imagine that the governing political party in the world’s most powerful nation (the US Republican Party) would adopt overt climate denialism as one of its core philosophies. Indeed the prospect would have seemed absurd. I assumed that climate denialism was just a flash-in-the-pan response to heavy political spending by fossil fuel companies. Nor did I expect that this bizarre phenomenon of science denialism would be accompanied by conspiracy theorising and broad-ranging assaults on the very concept of truth throughout the political system, including at the level of the presidency. If the trend towards populism continues throughout the world, overt denial of climate change may become consistently more prominent over future decades, even alongside worsening impacts of climate chaos. Humanity in aggregate, therefore, may not be as clever as many of us like to think. The proverbial boiling frog was at least just a passive and ignorant victim; we would be active and enthusiastic participants in our own demise.

Another name for this system trap is “eroding goals.” It is also called the “boiled frog syndrome,” from the old story (I don’t know whether it is true) that a frog put suddenly in hot water will jump right out, but if it is put into cold water that is gradually heated up, the frog will stay there happily until it boils. “Seems to be getting a little warm in here. Well, but then it’s not so much warmer than it was a while ago.” Drift to low performance is a gradual process. If the system state plunged quickly, there would be an agitated corrective process. But if it drifts down slowly enough to erase the memory of (or belief in) how much better things used to be, everyone is lulled into lower and lower expectations, lower effort, lower performance.

Like people wanted to be here. To create their own traditions rather than be defined by them.” “And so it was for Jake Turner,” said Ron. “His father was an old school control freak, and mother was distant. Lots of families like that. But it’s like boiling a frog. You get used to it. It might not be loving and caring and sitcom saccharin, but it’s not bad either. So Jake wasn’t running away. He was running to.

The same is becoming true with the spread of transgenderism. Ten years ago, few people knew what the word meant. Currently, the latest hellish idea we’re expected to embrace is that children have the right to take drugs to permanently stop puberty and to destroy their bodies under the false premise that they can alter their gender. Here is the point. Once we accept an idea that contradicts the Bible and violates our beliefs and morals, then anything thrown at us will become easier to accept over time. By the time the water is already boiling, it’s too late for the frog to jump out.

The speaker went on to talk about the apologue of the boiling frog. The central idea was that if a frog was put in boiling water, it would instantly jump out, saving its life. If, however, the frog was placed in tepid water, it would stay. And it would stay if the temperature were slowly increased, even until boiling, at which point the frog would die. The point was clear: gradual changes were harder to spot than radical ones.

Snail Broth for Obstinate Coughs Take three dozen garden snails, wash them in three or four different waters, then add to them the hind-quarters of two dozen stream frogs, previously skinned; bruise them together in a mortar; after which, put these into a stewpan with two turnips finely chopped, a tablespoonful of salt, a pinch of saffron, and three pints of cold water; set the stewpan on the fire, stir the lot with a wooden spoon until the broth begins to boil, then skim it most carefully, and set it by the side of the fire to simmer for half an hour; after which, the broth must be strained by pressing it through a tammy-cloth into a basin for use. This broth, from its soothing qualities, often counteracts successfully the straining effects of a severe and obstinate cough, and alleviates (more than any other culinary preparation) the sufferings of consumptive persons. Source: Practical Household Cookery by E. Duret (1891)

Having experienced extended periods of prosperity, health, and wealth, we become complacent. We stop doing what we did to get us there. We become like the frog in the boiling water that doesn’t jump to his freedom because the warming is so incremental and insidious that he doesn’t notice he’s getting cooked! If we want to succeed, we need to recover our grandparents’ work ethic.

them. Through most of medical history, doctors happily steered clear of incontinence, with folk medicine filling the vacuum. People ate roast pig penis sandwiches topped with buttered horse dung and stuck frogs to their kids’ waists. Mice seem to have been a universal remedy; in disparate cultures all over the world, people had them fried, boiled, baked into pancakes, and worn around the neck.

More often, medical trainees can be likened to frogs in slowly boiling water. We see sickness and death constantly, and if we are not careful, the doctor we had hoped to become will burn out. Out of necessity we create shells that protect and isolate us; sometimes it hurts too much to repeatedly feel another’s pain. We laugh at things that are not funny. We discuss people in a dehumanized, detached way.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog. Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hellbroth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

like boiling a frog. If we put everything about S&S into a CTA somewhere and ask people to join us, we’d surely overwhelm them — the frog dropped into boiling water and hence hopping right out in this metaphor. Autoresponders bring that same boil a degree at a time, letting people digest all we do like a frog slowly getting used to ever hotter water.

You Loved a Woman Once" She told you of childhood summers, mayflies trembling beside the bridge of her nose, hunting frogs. Skinning them on a brick, the house smelling like their small, fried legs. All she wanted was for you to carry her home in a canoe with paddles, life vests, a flare. You promised to teach her how to swim when she was in your arms. Your own body, broken into so many times, became a clear lake for her to bathe in. Remember pulling the one tiny, suckering leech from below her neck, the pale collarbone Braille it left. You said the boat was her shoulder in your mouth, even when you couldn’t bear her epaulets of freckles, even when nothing but a body would do and there was no body but her own. Below her—lily pads, dragonflies, the worms dug up last summer and thrown from the dock to see fish rise in a boil—now all snapped raw in the frozen pond. And speaker, coded “you”—what about the light straining through her dampened hair, will you catch it in your jaws? There’s the smell of paper on her skin and you pressing her body like a flower in a book.

Put a frog into a pot of water and gradually turn up the heat. The frog will keep adjusting to the increasing temperature until, finally, it dies. Put a frog into a pot of boiling water, though, and the frog will immediately try to jump out of the pot. We too notice the difference when things change drastically.

If a frog is placed into a pot of boiling water it will immediately try to jump out; but if it’s placed into a pot of cool water that’s gradually heated until boiling, it will stay put and never try to jump out.

fallen victim to the mental trap of the boiling frog. Drop a frog in hot water and it will hop out. But put it in a pot of cold water and heat it up slowly and the frog will sit there as it boils to death, ignoring the simple lifesaving option of one good hop to safety. The frog dies before it realizes there is any danger.

The metaphor of placing a frog in boiling water and turning up the heat slowly is often used to describe psychological and covert forms of abuse due to its gradual and insidious nature. Just as the frog may not notice the gradual increase in temperature until it's too late, victims of abuse often find themselves trapped in a toxic dynamic before fully realizing the extent of the damage. After the relationship they may also experience “delayed realization” a phenomena where the victim fails to recognize the severity of the abusive relationship until far after it’s ended.

You grew up believing you were free, which made it even harder for you to see when you weren’t. You were like frogs in the pot being slowly boiled.

A frog thrown into hot water will jump out. However, if the frog is placed into cool water and heat is slowly turned up over time, the frog will boil to death without knowing what is happening. This is what has been happening in America for decades, not to frogs, but to Americans, and they have absolutely no idea of the death that awaits them.

The advantages of high rank must be pretty enormous, otherwise evolution would never have installed such foolhardy ambitions. They are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, from frogs and rats to chickens and elephants. High rank generally translates into food for females and mates for males. I say “generally,” because males also compete for food, and females for mates, even though the latter is mostly restricted to species, like ours, in which males help out with child rearing. Everything in evolution boils down to reproductive success, which means that the different orientations of males and females make perfect sense. A male can increase his progeny by mating with many females while keeping rivals away. For the female, such a strategy makes no sense: mating with multiple males generally does not do her any good. The female goes for quality rather than quantity. Most female animals do not live with their mates, hence all they need to do is pick the most vigorous and healthy sex partner. This way, their offspring will be blessed with good genes. But females of species in which the mates stay around are in a different situation, which makes them favor males who are gentle, protective, and good providers. Females further enhance reproduction by what they eat, especially if they are pregnant or lactating, when caloric intake increases fivefold. Since dominant females can claim the best food, they raise the healthiest offspring. In some species, like rhesus macaques, the hierarchy is so strict that a dominant female will simply stop a subordinate walking by with bulging cheek pouches. These pouches help the monkeys carry food to a safe spot. The dominant will hold the head of the subordinate and open her mouth, essentially picking her pocket. Her intrusion meets with no resistance because for the subordinate it’s either this or get bitten.

It's the old story about incremental changes,” he said. When her confusion didn't clear, he continued. “If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out,” he said. “But if you put it in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it, it will eventually boil to death, not having noticed the incremental temperature changes. It's supposed to represent things like how a dictator might slowly make things worse in a country, bit by bit so no-one really registers a major change because they don't look at where they started and where they ended, they just compare one day to the next over and over.

people (especially in the West) don’t experience it as a severe crisis like the Great Stink or the Second World War. The impacts are too gradual: Like a frog that gets slowly boiled alive in water that rises only gradually in temperature, the planetary heat is getting turned up slowly and we’re failing to jump out of the pot.

Around the world, addiction has skyrocketed. And so has neurosis, psychosis, and depression. Along with anxiety, hatred, and divisiveness. We’ve become ever more polarized, ever more intolerant to points of view other than our own. We largely refuse to even listen to the other side of an argument. Corruption and selfishness are at epic levels. We can’t get out of our own way. “Our psyches didn’t evolve to handle our digital technology and social media, which have largely enslaved us. We’ve become bitter, divided, and venomous. Populations are falling. Free speech and democracy have become a mirage as tyranny and censorship rise in the shadows. “Societies around the world are living the parable of the boiled frog, who doesn’t jump from the pot as long as the heat is turned up gradually. Well, large swaths of humanity are remaining in the pot, and will stay there until they soon burst into flame. Largely unaware just how long the heat of oppression has been building. The powerful have turned our social media into a tool for mass brainwashing, for controlling every narrative. “Our quality of life is better than ever, yet our satisfaction with life is plummeting. We’re becoming lazy. Hedonistic. Materialistic. We’re losing our sense of spirituality. And human connection is at a low even as mass communication rises. Marriage is down, while loneliness and seclusion are up. Politicians stoke anger, perform in the theater of phony outrage, and demonize huge swaths of the population, willing to sacrifice the greater good for their own narcissism and pursuit of power.

The mental model often used to describe this class of unintended consequences is called the boiling frog: Suppose a frog jumps into a pot of cold water. Slowly the heat is turned up and up and up, eventually boiling the frog to death. It turns out real frogs generally jump out of the hot water in this situation, but the metaphorical boiling frog persists as a useful mental model describing how a gradual change can be hard to react to, or even perceive

You know, they say if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it'll jump right back out," he says. "But if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and steadily raise the temperature, it'll stay right where it is, like nothing is happening. You get where I'm going with this?

(If you read the Passover story carefully, in the part about the ten plagues, right after locusts, frogs, and boils, they mention bikes.)

Crazy or not, Kaczynski may be right in that man’s demise at the hands of machines will happen gradually, during which time we humans will become the proverbial frogs in the kettle set to boil. On the other hand, we are more likely to be reduced any day now in the blink of an enhanced eye to the status of domestic animals in the minds of artificial intelligence, as Technological Singularity—

Put a frog in boiling water and it’ll jump out right away. Put a frog in tepid water, slowly turn up the heat, and eventually the frog will cook to death.

boiling frogs” and “elephants in the room”—combine them with your list of trends and spend some time pondering how you could exploit them. Ask yourself, • Which of these would be the most disruptive? • For which ones are we least ready? • Which ones are right in front of us, yet we are hesitant to admit they’re there? • What about our competitors—why are they ready for some more than others? • How do these future events, whether likely or unlikely, influence the kinds of new ideas we want to generate during Step 3 divergence? • How do they change our central line of inquiry?

…remembered a bit of folklore-probably you’ve heard it- about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.

It’s about control,” Bishop said. “The consolidation of power in the guise of public safety. It’s an age-old game that’s been played a thousand times throughout time on government stages large and small. The erosion of our rights is the slow death of freedom. We’re the frogs basking in the warm pan bath while the water boils us to death, and some of us don’t even realize it.