Well, it either outs you as a non-San Franciscan or a poor one, since that's the native demographic that's historically called it 'Frisco'. Really, the frisco should be 'San Fran'.
I've only seen that one used in conversation when the context is already Bay Area focused, like "Hey, we're going into the city for a night out Friday. You down?"
It's definitely a regionalism, as there are 80 something cities in the Bay Area and "The City" definitely refers to SF, but it's not something I'd hear someone say in broader contexts. One regionalism that Bay Area dwellers DO use in broader contexts is referring to the San Fransisco Bay Area as just "The Bay", which I'm sure could be unclear to somebody near a different body of water.
Everyone I've ever met uses "the city" to refer to the closest metropolis. NYC isn't special in this regard. Take a short drive up to New England. People will use "the city" when talking about Boston.
Well.... I grew up exactly between Boston and NYC and nobody called Boston "the city".
It's just hard to think of SF as a metropolis- even with its densely populated downtown- when you can sort of just plonk its 750K residents down in the borough of manhattan (half the size, twice the population).
When I lived in outer sunset, it was more like "the beach, with a park, oh and a mildly urbanized area to the east"
As someone from Boston, "the city" as destination is the nearest city, whether that's Chicago, Toronto, or Seattle. "The City" as proper noun is New York.
To clarify, what makes it weird is that anywhere else, Oakland and San Jose (and if you go far flung enough, a dozen other Bay Area cities) could well be "the city". It's not even just a size thing, San Jose is bigger than San Fransisco.
I suspect that was intentional. Lovecraft and many of his peers were anti-Semitic, and crafting names for cosmic horrors that vaguely sounded like Hebrew would mesh with that.
Everybody in Frisco (I lived there for a decade) knows the true anti-shibboleth is saying "The 5" instead of "5". 90% chance the person saying it grew up in southern CA.
Was Frisco, TX named because the railroad went to SF, or was it named because the Frisco Lines railroad (which itself went to SF) passed through? That is, was it named after the destination, or the railroad? Frisco, CO is named after the railroad, even though it /doesn't/ pass through...
I think jokes can act as anti-shibboleth. There are some jokes that are so obvious and overused that it stops being funny to insiders and they moved on. I am thinking of something like "Uranus" -> "your anus". I may be wrong with my example but I suppose astronomers like toilet humor as much as anyone else, but at some point, they need to do their thing without getting constantly distracted by that planet name, so they just stop joking about it.
It is not always obvious which jokes are off limits. Because they may not be bad or offensive, it is just that they interfere with day to day activity, and outsider may not know what are these day to day activities and how disruptive it is.
I first heard the expression on a stats course for an MSc programme and am struggling a bit with the idea that it’s a concept not used by scientists, as other posters also attest to. The lecturer used the expression in the context of poor scientific news reporting where correlations were used to imply causation. Such that it’s used as a cheap propaganda or marketing gimmick.
It’s also fair point, as the writer points out, that correlation doesn’t say something interesting.
What I also find interesting is that the meaning of shibboleth has moved on: no longer a test of insider/outsider status. Now a totemic belief or principle.
I have been in the Bay Area almost 40 years and I still enjoy intentionally dropping "Frisco" and "San Fran" and even "San Fran Frisco" to unsuspecting individuals, just to witness them cringe.
To me the whole thing just reeks of "None of the cool kids call it that!"
This is strange, because the example they give about "correlation does not imply causation" being a "frisco" outing you as a non-scientist is very much not supported by the Slate article they claim to have gotten it from. The Slate article provides a very reasonable take on that phrase and in fact implies that we might need more such catchy phrases outing the common fallacies that scientists make and ignore. It gives a great reason why it's such an important phrase -- because forgetting it can lead us to interventions that make things worse rather than better. If saying "correlation does not imply causation" outs you as a non-scientist, then all it's saying is "true" scientists don't give a shit about the implications of their research, nor if people misconstrue their results and use it to justify harmful interventions. Which may be true, I suppose, but it's an extremely cynical take; the phrase is about whether and how we can apply scientific results to better our world, something apparently "true" scientists don't give a shit about?
I read it as in movies where a grandmaster "checkmate" another. While you do win by checkmating, most GM matches end long before it, and the losing party will resign. Not resigning when under mate in 6 can be seen as an insult that the winning GM will somehow miss the winning line like a novice and this will waste time for both parties. Although this does still happen.
Back to the topic, I can see saying "correlation does not imply causation" be seen as an insult that the scientist miss a critical principle like a novice and this will waste time for both parties. Although regrettably it looks like lots of them do miss this critical principle, so this saying may still need to be repeated more often.
I also found that extremely weird. I'm a scientist, or at least I got a STEM PhD before I quit, and I often think about how indeed correlation does not imply causation, and how a lot of science (or the media reporting thereof) seems to think the opposite. I wouldn't use it myself because it sounds a little cliched, but I would be pleased to hear someone utter the phrase. Although it may often be accompanied by some questionable beliefs (it's 2024, we all have them), it indicates that someone has given some kind of thought to something.
> My desire to find a name for the anti-shibboleth grew stronger recently, when I read Dan Engber’s excellent piece in Slate about how all the idiots on the internet keep saying “Correlation does not imply causation.” Scientists know that, whenever someone says “correlation does not imply causation,” we are dealing with clueless civilians. The phrase is a perfect anti-shibboleth to smoke out civilians pretending to know something about science
I hate this paragraph and everything it represents.
Honestly, I hate the very idea of "a phrase that only idiots on the internet say". It's such an arrogant concept.
It also spoiled the piece for me. It made it seem like the article was more about inventing a new insult to deploy in internet arguments rather than trying to pin down an interesting concept.
> It’s not like scientists are physically incapable of saying “correlation does not imply causation,” in the sense that Ephraimites were presumably physically incapable of pronouncing the word “shibboleth.” It’s just that no real scientists would.
Genuinely curious: What do real scientists say instead at the myriad of pop-science articles that superimpose two graphs and declare that jello cures laryngitis?
I am an ex-scientist and I can confirm that scientists frequently say this. Normally it's what you say after you read a paper from your competitor.
Realistically, almost no modern research demonstrates causation; nearly all work is associational, ideally with a prepdonderance of supporting evidence and no counter-evidence (which merely means it hasn't been falsified. Now falsified- that's a work scientists rarely if ever use).
It depends a lot on the field. In fields where you can ethically and cost effectively set up controlled experiments, demonstrating causation is pretty common. In fields where you can't, it's rare.
I worked in biophysics with molecules and I don't think we considered even our most carefully run experiments as demonstrating causation. Even in physics nearly everything is presented as a probabilistic claim.
