if you throw a frog in boiling water it will die immediately. If, instead, you heat up that water slowly, the frog will eventually be unable to maintain homeostasis and will leave, just like you would if it got too hot.

But the whole point is that it is not true. There have been experiments and what the anegdote fails to mention is that step one in boiling the frog by slowly increasing the temperature is removing its brain.

But don't take my word for it: https://archive-srel.uga.edu/outreach/ecoviews/ecoview071223...

I don’t see this as incontrovertible. perhaps 2° per minute is too quick

The frog story is an effective anecdote because even if it isn't true it is extremely plausible. The whipping story is casually racist and by advocating for the most extreme and unbelievable end of a spectrum of possible iterations of an idea it serves rather to discredit it rather than promoting it by inspiring disgust and disbelief.

When I read about the frog I suspend scientific analysis of the frog long enough to get the anecdote. When I read the whipping story I think wow British people are so racist, so disconnected from reality, and so stupid they believe that the people they subjugated in their land are such natural slaves that when not crushed under a British heel they pay to be likewise abused in their own lands.

If you wanted to simultaneously smear the modern Brit and the modern American you could do no better than to let Michael Munger talk.

Nobody objects to Aesop's fables about a mouse talking to a lion. But I think it's fair to object to stories that are presented as fact. They attempt to implicitly derive credibility from the "this actually happened" aspect.

Maybe it is not besides the point, if the phenomenon does not exist.