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Related: About this forumHumans Are Not Like Slowly Boiling Frogs … We Are Like Slowly Boiling Brainless Frogs
Humans Are Not Like Slowly Boiling Frogs
We Are Like Slowly Boiling Brainless Frogs
By Joe Romm on May 28, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Even though people keep using the famous simile the fatally slow human response to climate change makes us like a slowly boiling frog it is not quite right.
As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water. Other 19th Century studies appeared to have different results, but modern experiments (!) show that frogs with brains are in fact smart enough to leap out of water as it is heated up.
James Fallows of The Atlantic, who I am quite certain holds the world record for boiling frog posts, has one from Michael Jones who cites Sensation in the Spinal Cord from Nature, Dec. 4, 1873:
Even so, I am inclined to agree with Jones that this should not be fatal to the metaphor. It just needs to be tweaked.
Technically, we are the...
By Joe Romm on May 28, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Even though people keep using the famous simile the fatally slow human response to climate change makes us like a slowly boiling frog it is not quite right.
As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water. Other 19th Century studies appeared to have different results, but modern experiments (!) show that frogs with brains are in fact smart enough to leap out of water as it is heated up.
James Fallows of The Atlantic, who I am quite certain holds the world record for boiling frog posts, has one from Michael Jones who cites Sensation in the Spinal Cord from Nature, Dec. 4, 1873:
Goltz observed that a frog, when placed in water the temperature of which is slowly raised towards boiling, manifests uneasiness as soon as the temperature reaches 25° C., and becomes more and more agitated as the heat increases, vainly struggling to get out, and finally at 42° C., dies in a state of rigid tetanus. The evidence of feeling being thus manifested when the frog has its brain, what is the case with a brainless frog? It is absolutely the reverse. Quietly the animal sits through all successions of temperature, never once manifesting uneasiness or pain, never once attempting to escape the impending death.
Even so, I am inclined to agree with Jones that this should not be fatal to the metaphor. It just needs to be tweaked.
Technically, we are the...
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/28/491155/humans-are-not-like-slowly-boiling-frogs-we-are-like-slowly-boiling-brainless-frogs/
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Humans Are Not Like Slowly Boiling Frogs … We Are Like Slowly Boiling Brainless Frogs (Original Post)
kristopher
May 2012
OP
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)1. That's not a very nice thing to say
Most people got brains. I'm sure some people do. I even met one who did.
Well, i met two, maybe three.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)2. And then there are those who...
.... even here in EE, continue to complain that we can't live without nukes.
That it will cost too much to quit poisoning the earth.
Is that what you mean by brain dead? Sure seems to fit.....