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"The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive.

The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.

The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly."

In the case of Apple, at some point when they do something you really dislike you might be too invested into the ecosystem and it will be easier to just accept it instead of leaving.

But if you were not on their ecosystem already and were thinking of switching to Apple you would just think "Yeah, I really dislike that new move, I'm not buying into it".




I mean, if you try this with a real frog, the frog will actually just jump out when it gets too hot.

It's just a metaphor. It's not a law of nature, nor is it even a GOOD metaphor.


Wow, today I learned. I really did think it was real, but looks like it's not:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-b...


I believe to get the behavior you need a brainless frog - they are shockingly functional due to how much behavior is in bodily reflexes. In that context the brainless frog sort of fits as a metaphor of "cargo culted" or tradition fixed behavior or single strategy. An approach well adapted enough to the expected environment that no thinking is required but is doomed as soon as it has to deal with change.


sorry to be pedantic, but if you believe wikipedia, it is true (just you probably cant reproduce it on your kitchen stove)

--

The New Psychology (1897): "a live frog can actually be boiled without a movement if the water is heated slowly enough; in one experiment the temperature was raised at a rate of 0.002°C per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2½ hours without having moved."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog


I was today years old..




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