Not sure how to rate this because it's bullllllllsheeit. Basically in the real experiment, the frogs had most of their brains removed first. Frogs with brains WILL jump out of water before it gets hot enough to kill them. Frogs with brains are smart!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
The link to James Fallows' blogging about the prolific use of this metaphor is pretty funny & interesting. One of his readers suggested a better metaphor is how people get desensitized to the smell of their cat's litter box whereas guests will instantly be repulsed by the smell upon entering their apartment.
Yes, there is a hell of a lot of difference between 90 and 212. Even 100 degrees would be bearable, hell most people take showers in that kind of temp.
bullshit indeed. I was told about this "experiment" many times as a young christian. it was an analogy about how the sinful ways of the world will get you if you allow yourself to slowly acclimate to them.
And this clip has to be a part of a larger work with just that point. You can hear it in the smug moralizing tone of the narrator. He's got hold of some stupid cliche that he knows his audience has heard a million times from the pulpit before, but whom he knows are all going to pretend that it's clever so that they can feel superior when they let on that they either saw it coming or really can appreciate how "so true" that message was.