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Saving the Frogs
Whenever a week is dominated by things like UN opening sessions, G20 meetings, senate markup sessions, and the like — well, you just know that's going to be a slow week. 
When was the last time something genuinely interesting happened at a UN opening session, after all? Thirty years ago when Yasser Arafat demonstrated his revolutionary cred by giving a speech with a gun holster at his hip? (They made him leave the gun itself at the door.)
Meh. So let's pass some time talking instead about James Fallows' great obsession: boiling frogs. To start, here's an excerpt from a piece Paul Krugman wrote a couple of months ago:
I'm referring, of course, to the proverbial frog that, placed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it's in and is boiled alive. Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot — but never mind. The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time.
Italics mine. And Krugman is right: even though it's untrue that frogs will mindlessly poach themselves to death if you're careful to turn up the temperature on them slowly, it's a useful metaphor. Still, it's not true. So we should find another one.
But here's the thing: Fallows issued a worldwide call for good substitute metaphors two years ago. Four days later he promised that winners would be announced in a couple of days. And then....nothing.
So here's what I'm interested in. The boiling frog cliche is untrue. But it stays alive because, as Krugman says, it's a useful metaphor. So why aren't there any good substitutes?
This is very strange. Most useful adages and metaphors not only have substitutes, they have multiple substitutes. "Look before you leap" and "Curiosity killed the cat." "Fast as lightning" and "Faster than a speeding bullet." Etc. Usually you have lots of choices.
But in this case we don't seem to have a single one aside from the boiling frog. Why? Is it because it's not really all that useful a metaphor after all? Because the frog has ruthlessly killed off every competitor? Because it's not actually true in any circumstance, let alone with frogs in pots of water? What accounts for this linguistic failure?
UPDATE: Hoo boy. If Glenn Beck wasn't on Jim's shit list before, he sure is now. He's also an idiot, of course.
frogs and birds
tagged as:- solution
Well, the steaming frogs are as you say used as a metaphore for scenarios that are too slowmoving, hard to notice and usually too complex for the object to notice just what happens... So arguably such scenarios does not make good metaphores.
How about the famous canarie in the colemine though? The canarie really works like a frog alarm clock, so maybe it's like "being in the mine without a canarie" then.
how about, instead of the
how about, instead of the boiling frog, we could describe things in terms of the slow imperceptible descent into addiction !
yay!
Just how are "Look before
Just how are "Look before you leap" and "Curiosity killed the cat" substitutes for one another?
To me, each phrase has a distinct meaning, and in some circumstances can convey opposite meanings.
(Yes, I get your point, but I'm feeling grouchy and pedantic today.)
Death by a thousand cuts?
Death by a thousand cuts?
"Better the devil you know"
"Better the devil you know" could be read as an adage supporting the inaction of the frog being boiled.
Real life slippery slopes?
I don't think there are many real world slippery slope, which is why it is a fallacy.
You've got the "First they came..." Niemoller poem... so Nazis. Nazis are like boiling frogs. What else?
first to identify with the frog upholds Godwin's Law
No, I think the Nazis would be the flame beneath the pot in your analogy. The author of the poem you cite would be the frog.
There are no boiling frog
There are no boiling frog substitutes because that metaphor is like the boiling frog metaphor which although it is untrue substantially stands as the only metaphor to describe that situation.
A literary critic looks at the metaphor...
I have long thought that it's the last option. It's not true for frogs or for any biological organism. Every animal is subject to negative stimuli that slowly increase from un-detectable to dangerous, so every organism needs a mechanism for triggering a response that is, essentially, discontinuous: up to amount X of stimulus, do nothing; after point X, do something. We encounter this hundreds of times a day, though because it is largely autonomous, we pay it little mind: when you are sitting and shift position, it's because some muscle has been slowly used up and it's not that it suddenly broke, it's just that it crossed some threshold of discomfort and you automatically moved; or you scratch somewhere, a spot that had been slowly and unconsciously getting more itchy until it crossed some threshold to action. There are hundreds of more examples for almost every animal and almost every type of sensation. The point is in the real world, gradual boiling doesn't happen because it's 1) deadly, and 2) easily avoided with a threshold mechanism.
More important for the metaphor, I think that people like the metaphor for political reasons: it is deployed when someone is arguing that X isn't bad yet, but will be soon. But following the (real) biological metaphor, why act if it isn't yet bad? This is the real failure of the metaphor: usually, the argument is that it is easier to fix it now than later, when it does get bad. But of course it is just as easy for the frog to jump out later as now; if he's perfectly safe now in his pot, why not wait until he gets uncomfortable to jump out? Similarly, the calls-to-action in the form of the frog metaphor are often for things that only debatably need to be acted on now, like the social security funding problems. Even the health cost problems are quite debatable. Do we really need to act now? The far left and far right are equally dubious of this: the right because it likes the current system, the left because it is focussed much more on universalizing health care than "bending" the curve. The frog-ralliers are generally trying to push people into an action that, by all current stimuli, is not necessary, and the weaknesses of the metaphor are related to the weaknesses of the political argument: Do we really need to fix what is not yet broken? Why not just focus on current problems, and wait for future problems to become real? The trick is just to set your threshold correctly; if that is done, then there is no need to fear being boiled alive before you know it.
threshold of a dream
Great analysis JD, but "the trick is just to set your threshold correctly" only works for known phenomenon like 'ice in a pond so thick at such and such temperature will support so much weight' was found experientially and later equations could be written. For example, in the phenomenon of human caused global warming, we ARE the experiment, we're living it. We can't know we've crossed thresholds until it's too late and our environment has rapidly become unlivable.
So we might be boiling and not be able to jump.
A Jack Johnson line
Cheeky, but I think kind of on point (although with a less morbid outcome).
From "Traffic in the Sky"
instead they'll say
"well how could we have known?"
i'll tell them it's not so hard to tell
you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well
Boiling Frog Substitutes
I think "a slow-motion train wreck" is a good substitute.
No, that's significantly
No, that's significantly different.
The point of the frog: A horrible thing is happening slowly, and could be prevented at any time, if only we were to notice that it was happening.
The point of the train: A horrible thing is happening slowly, and cannot be stopped, despite the fact that it's obvious to everyone that it's happening.
Neither metaphor is simply "A horrible thing is happening slowly", but that's all they have in common with each other.
I have one - "it's like
I have one - "it's like getting into a land war in Asia." Factually true example of a creeping problem that can be applied in lieu of the frog metaphor.
Homer Simpson of the twenty
Homer Simpson of the twenty years in the future (in a flash-forward), while watching TV, said something like:
"Fox became a hardcore pornography station so gradually, I barely even noticed."
I nominate that, except perhaps replacing "Fox" by "Fox News".
We will delay finding a new
We will delay finding a new metaphor until the evolution of an intelligent and vengeful species of frog... but then it will be too late.
slippery slope.
slippery slope.
When frogs are outlawed...
...only outlaws will have frogs.
Too much?
Ha. Good one.
Frogs legs, cold dead hands and all that.
"Life is like a box of chocolates."
"Life is like a slow train climbing up a hill."
Is life like a Simpsons episode or t'other way 'round?
The boiling frog metaphor is
The boiling frog metaphor is based on real life - not the life of frogs, though. Humans do this sort of thing routinely. We're in a climate-change crisis and we're still arguing about whether the danger is real while trees die, forests burn, glaciers melt, storms rage, species disappear, diseases spread, rising water erodes coastlines, droughts and floods result in famine. And it's too late to stop it. We might mitigate some of the effects if we change our behavior soon enough, but we've still got huge swaths of the American population saying, What? It's just a little hot water.
It's not the first time we let a crisis creep up on us, either. The Great Depression, fascism, corporatism, AIDS, our current Great Recession...as long as it happens slowly enough, we can't be bothered to react until we find ourselves in big, big trouble.
I don't see what your problem is
This is why God created air conditioning.
Oh! I got one! Wikipedia:
Oh! I got one!
Wikipedia:
Until he jumps out of the tent because it's too hot! See?
Hey, I AM serious about how close it comes.
Wait, look before you leap
Wait, look before you leap and curiosity killed the cat are opposites!
The Cat one is about how you shouldn't be interested in anything because it'll bring trouble, looking before leaping is about how you should plan ahead and not just be self-absorbed.
But is it a useful metaphor after all?
I'll be a contrarian: maybe it's not so useful a metaphor after all, true or false. We know everything we need to know about climate change, and scientists were raising alarm bells in quite a timely fashion, as cutting edge research might be expected to do. True, there were at first competing models, and there is always information overload, but the problem wasn't that gradual change made it invisible.
Similarly, anyone could see that housing was overvalued. Indeed, in most booms, rather than gradual change, one sees spikes replacing the usual gradual price changes. True, the proliferation of poorly capitalized speculative instruments was largely invisible, but hardly owing to its being simultaneously public and gradual, but rather carefully hidden from view and very novel.
Rather, we see a mix of politics and corporate greed. This can cause a small minority with a lot of power to deny the facts (and led the media by the nose). Or it can cause people to tell themselves that the water will boil any minute, but they'll still have time to cash in and make a bundle. But they know it's going to boil. In sum, it's not about what the metaphor says: it's about greed pure and simple.
Not true in any circumstance
It's not a useful metaphor because it's not true in any circumstance, and it doesn't actually describe any of the events that people are trying to use it as a metaphor for.
We don't get into catastrophic situations because they happen so slowly we don't notice. If the frog analogy were accurate to the economy, what would have happened is the economy would have degraded a little at a time, ever slightly lower gdp, ever slightly higher unemployment, until one day there was no economy at all but noone knew there was anything wrong with that.
What actually happened is things got better and better for everybody. Everyone knew that it wasn't sustainable. But psychologically we couldn't give up good times in the present to prevent catastrophic times in the future. Even though we knew they would come. In the cases of the economy and the environment, there is a disincentive to jumping out of the pot.
There there's the metaphor
There there's the metaphor where a frog was placed in a slowly heating pot of water, but the Republican Party convinced him that "theories" that the water was heating up were part of an insidious Socialist plot to enslave him, and that he is actually in the coolest water on record. And so the frog died.
The metaphor is completely
The metaphor is completely true! I've boiled many frogs this way. Puppies won't hop out of the pot either.
Salami Tactics
If you cut off a razor-thin slice and eat it, the entire salami seems to be just as large as before. But cut off a slice a day, and after a while, nothing is left.
Unrelated, perhaps, but I believe that the odds of winning the Powerball lottery are the same whether you buy a ticket or not.
Outliers
"Unrelated, perhaps, but I believe that the odds of winning the Powerball lottery are the same whether you buy a ticket or not."
Correct for a few small (but very very happy) outliers, and this statement goes from effectively true to true.
Termites in the basement
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22termites+in+the+basement%22
ID>Do we really need to fix
ID>Do we really need to fix what is not yet broken? Why not just focus on current problems, and wait for future problems to become real? The trick is just to set your threshold correctly; if that is done, then there is no need to fear being boiled alive before you know it...
This logic doesn't work where there is a large lag between behavior changes and the rate of increase of the problem. The climate will continue to warm for decades after changes in policy are put into effect.
Changes in the climate system itself could also happen in a discontinuous way, with it being difficult or impossible to engineer it back to its former state.
Krugman's frog reference is
Krugman's frog reference is a skyscraper built by bears. Sure, bears don't build skyscrapers, but it's a useful metaphor for something awesome.
Oh, and the confusion caused by writers' reliance on colorful metaphors regardless of their truth or relevance is a hurricane started by the flapping of a million butterflies. Such hurricanes don't happen, but if they did they would be like the confusion.
As much as I appreciate Krugman, this reminds me of Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" which defines mendacious as "addicted to rhetoric."
No one could have predicted.
No one could have predicted.
Here's your boiling frog:
Here's your boiling frog: http://carriedaway.blogs.com/carried_away/images/economics/u.S.%20Spendi...
sunburn
sunburn
How about a frog in a
How about a frog in a boiling pot who's bribed with huge amounts of money from the gas company to convince all the other frogs that it's just not worth the effort to get out of the pot?
Who cares if it's not
Who cares if it's not literally true. It works and it's useful.
As for those who tested this with real pots and real frogs: OK, the frog jumps out as you heat the water -- but I don't see any tests using controls where the water wasn't heated. Why would a frog want to stay in ANY pot of water, whether it was being heated or not? My guess is that frogs always will always jump out of the pot if they can.
Animals do migrate when the weather changes though, or when water becomes scarce.
frogs and pots
we could have saved the frog by watching the pot
Mcmama is right. We need to
Mcmama is right. We need to figure out the situation we're analogizing before we come up with an analogy.
The frog metaphor was trying to get at this: a *trend* is occurring. The trend is so strong that once we figure out we have a problem, it's too late--the trend will become unstoppable.
That's what global warming is about: by the time we take action (and action always follows awareness), it may be too late to really avert the worst effects of it.
So the analogy needs to have a trend in it that is potentially unstoppable, awareness or not of the trend as a factor, and something that regulates attention.
I like all metaphors with trains, because I love trains, and because they really are unstoppable past a certain point. But I'm open to others.
Frogs are dissected, like
Frogs are dissected, like the American electorate.
Actually, the metaphor is
Actually, the metaphor is much more revealing than you think.
Many liberals believe that if you stick a frog in a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog will die before it realizes that its being cooked to death.
The reality is that the frog is perfectly alright and will jump out when he needs to.
And in the real world.
Many liberals think now, and have thought in the past, that the latest liberal enviro-scare - global warming, global cooling, ozone depletion, health care crisis, oil depletion, over-population, food shortages, etc. etc. etc., .... will eventually have catastrophic consequences unless an appointed group of liberal experts are given emergency powers to control the situation now.
The reality is that man and the earth are perfectly alright, and technological improvements will fix the problem when it needs to be fixed.
I am beginning to think that in general liberals are so prone to believe a crisis because what they really want is a world controlled by their precious experts, not freedom.
actually the metaphor is for denial
Many of the above commenters might be considered 'liberal,' but they acknowledge the frog does jump out of the pot before succumbing to the boiling water. The metaphor of the frog is realized when people deny problems exist, or if problems do exist they can be easily overcome with magic and without opportunity costs.
Oh, you're so right
Yes, you've really nailed it: liberals have a monopoly on hysteria over imagined catastrophes. Yup. Things like:
"Regulation will destroy business!"
"The government is trying to take over your life!"
"Obama wants to institute 'Death Panels' and kill your grandma!"
"Private health insurers can't compete with a public option!"
"Illegal brown people are trying to steal your job!"
"There's a war on Christmas!"
"Small business will be crippled by an increase in the minimum wage!"
"Gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage!"
"Socialism will destroy this country!"
"If we don't torture people, we'll all be blown up!"
Run for your lives, America.
I never heard of the frog
I never heard of the frog metaphor. I did see a hilarious cartoon years back that showed a French restaurant with legless frogs rolling around in wheelchairs.
Maybe the lobster metaphor? The boy who cried wolf? He who hesitates is lost? Chicken Little and the sky is falling? Act in haste; regret in leisure?
Perhaps some morals from Grimm fairy tales about people who ignore warnings would serve?
I invented the Second Law of maxims maxim: "For every maxim or saw, there is an equal but opposite maxim or saw. Ex.: "Out of sight, out of mind," or "Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Boiling Frog Metaphor
Scott Adams (Dilbert) has many strips on this - the one that comes to mind is Wally with the 'head cubicle'. Honestly, we started out in offices, which became ever-shrinking cubicles, the walls lowered so we could 'interact', culminating in the 'hoteling' concept - like musical chairs in the office- the last one in the office probably doesn't get a space.
Not as pithy as the frog metaphor, but a real-life example nonetheless.
The end result, in the frog
The end result, in the frog metaphor, is more or less equivalent to "the straw that broke the camel's back".
So maybe that, or perhaps a slight variant, such as "we keep adding straws, since they haven't yet broken the camel's back."
>culminating in the
>culminating in the 'hoteling' concept..
That's not the endpoint - there's one more step: working out of a home office, with a requirement for multiple daily written updates, plus periodic video recordings of chats with your colleagues, and the ocassional story about your cats so as to humanize you to your coworkers (so they're a bit less cutthroat).
It's like the Easter Island Forest
I don't know how well this would work as a metaphor, but the Easter Island native population is believed to have experienced the "boiling frog" scenario when they accidentally deforested their island over time. The extinction of the Dodo might work too.
If you read the things you'd
If you read the things you'd link to, you'd see that Fallows proposed cat litter as a substitute.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/im_joining_the_gop....
frogs
like watching yourself grow older by looking in the mirror every morning.
Or like watching your kid grow up.
not perfect but at least a frog does not have to die.