I don't know about a "formal proof based in logic and semantics", so how about I just use what we're discussing - words.

A person can choose to not care at all about something. When I say I "couldn't care less" about something, there is only one way that could be true - if I don't care at all. Or to say it another way, if I'm capable of not caring about something, then there is only one condition that makes the statement "I couldn't care less" true - when I don't care at all.

But if I could care less about something, that is simply another way of saying I do care some amount. Therefore, when someone says "I could care less" to express the idea that they don't care, they're using the incorrect expression. If they care at some level, they "could care less". If they don't care, they quite clearly "couldn't care less".

But that's not team Luckbox. Team Luckbox is making some strange argument that words mean something different. You are correct that it has become idiomatic - native English speakers should understand that when someone says "I could care less" they mean they don't care, even though that doesn't make any sense. It's interesting in how that has come to be; I think it's a bit like "irregardless", in that the incorrect usage has happened because people don't realize the error, and over time the erroneous term has come to be used more and more commonly. Although with "I could care less", at least one could argue it is simpler to say.

Well, it often is, and is usually understood that way, but I think it gets a lot more pushback than "I could care less" or "irregardless", maybe because rather than being simply an incorrect usage, it's more of an evolution or shift. People seem to be always looking for new ways to add emphasis to things, and this has become the case with "literal". Sometimes that's the way the usage works out, like the difference between "it's freezing outside" when it's cold, and "it's literally freezing outside" when things are actually freezing. Its correct use often ends up emphasizing something more, so now it's come to be used by some simply for emphasis.

Not sure if I'm expressing clearly the differences I'm observing between the change leading to different idiomatic terms, but I find the "literally" difference to be more of an understandable or natural shift. Not that I care for it any more than the first two examples.

this is what happens when you lock a bunch of autists in a room together

Just to add to this. If the context called for "dollars" rather than "money" but still in a context where they represented money rather than discrete units (e.g. silver dollars), I think "less" is correct: I would prefer "there are less dollars to the pound than Euros to the pound" to "there are fewer dollars to the pound than Euros to the pound" (factually incorrect, for the record).

This came up in my feed recently, no idea why. I don't usually watch stuff about words, YouTube been spying on my 2+2 posts lol!

That has absolutely nothing to do with someone using the expression "I could care less" when they're trying to say they don't care at all. The argument isn't (or at least it shouldn't be) whether or not "I couldn't care less" could never mean anything other than "I don't care". Sure, one could argue that "I couldn't care less" means "I'm incapable of caring less" and in some cases might mean that they care about something and are incapable of caring less about it. But that doesn't change the fact that "I could care less" can never mean someone doesn't care. Someone can only care less if they presently care to some level.

There is a person in my life who I pretty much do love unconditionally. She's basically like a cat where she can't disappoint me and even if she pisses in my bed (which she did once super drunk) or brings me a dead rat on my pillow (this she never did fortunately), the amount of love that I have for her is fixed and not changing. I could not love her less nor care less about her.

It's not really crazy mental gymnastics to get here. I think D2's issue is that you're thinking too mathematically and trying to quantify emotions like care when these things are quantifiable-- even though I've shown with the bitcoin example that even when we do reduce the problem to numbers my point still stands.

You could certainly describe how much you care and state that you were not capable of caring any less than that. But you'd need to say how much you cared first. "I care enough to post about this on the internet when I'm bored. I don't think I could care any less, though". Luckbox seems to think all the rest beyond "I could care... less" could be understood. But it really can't. To get his meaning it needs to all be there.

A heartwarming tale. Can I recommend that regardless of how flawless you find this reasoning, you don't say to her "I couldn't care less about you". It might not be interpreted in the way you envision.

While I understand what you are saying here, it clearly has nothing to do with the original use of the expression "couldn't care less" or the current use of "could care less". I guarantee that at least 99.99% of people using the latter phrase do it based on a misunderstanding. There may have never been a person who used it deliberately to mean what you say here. In fact, I doubt that you have even ever done it yourself!

That doesn't factor into my argument and understand how the phrases are used. I'm the one who went to the BYU website and pulled the numbers.

The fact that more people get it wrong than right is just proof a wholesale failure to logic. A person can be smart. People are stupid.

your browser knows what you're typing/reading

sent a dm to someone about blackjack, specifically about a special side bet i thought could be +EV under the right counts today i load up youtube and it's a suggested video on specifically that exact side bet

Yeah, I long suspected this. I guess that's also why all those fleshlight tutorials are coming through in my top suggestions.

Great video!

"Bemused" is one I've struggled with. I think it stems from reading a lot when I was young, and often learning words from a combination of context and what made sense to me from the parts of the word I knew (or thought I did). I typically knew "amused" didn't quite fit, but it seemed close enough to me, or the precise meaning wasn't important enough to change the understanding of a passage, that I didn't bother to learn it for some time. As a result, to this day it's reflex to read it as "amused" and then stop myself, and that confusion is compounded by people using it that way - possibly for the same reasons I read (in the past - now there's one of the worst sins of the English language - read being the past tense of read) it that way.

Completely guilty on "unique"; I'll try to do better with that one. And I've definitely contributed to the "bleaching" of words like "awesome", "fantastic", "amazing" and many more. I doubt I'll be changing that, and it's far too late anyway.

This is just how language works. It's not a reflection on people's intelligence.

In Colombian Spanish (perhaps elsewhere in Latin America I'm not sure), if you want to buy something from someone you'll frequently hear people say "me regala"-- which literally means "gift me", even though they aren't asking for it for free and fully expect to pay. So I can go into a shop and say "me regala una botella de aqua por fa", and then I pay for the water and that's perfectly normal and accepted. Phrases have the ability to take on meanings separate from their literal meanings.

Double negatives are probably a better example since we're dealing with logic, but there are tons of languages including dialects of English that employ it and everyone still understands the intent.

I agree with all this. I just disagree that "could care less" is a good example of it. Anyone who thinks about it for 2 seconds can see why it's wrong, absent your massively convoluted logic, which I assure you is unique (CWIDT?) to you, and is also not "logic" in the traditional meaning of that word.

And for the love of god, the "everyone understands the intent" argument should be outright banned ITT. We're discussing what is correct, not what is comprehensible.

Escalatedquickly.jpg huh?

Yeah, one or two of those were definitely new to me also (unique wasn't one of them, in fact my ex and I used to have a running inside joke that there are no gradations of uniqueness, which we in turn stole from a popular sitcom here), although I knew most of them, including "enormity" - I actually pointed out that Thatcher was using that word incorrectly when one of her old speeches was playing on TV once.

I'm probably going to check out some more of his vids at some point, will post here if I find anything good.

I don't have much to say about "could care less". We've been arguing about "couldn't care less" which is a lot more interesting and not the logical opposite of "could care less".

Hate to break it to you, but that's what "logical opposite" means. Literally (CWIDT again?), it's a "NOT" operation.

People using enormity incorrectly really grinds my gears.

This is you thinking that language is computer programming when we've already gone through the thought experiments and talked about girlfriends and bitcoins and you've all but conceded that my arguments have validity.

They really don't and others have also explained to why they don't in 100 different ways that have nothing to do with formal logic, although that was explicitly what you asked for. Re-read chillrob's and Bobo's posts for those explanations.

People often respond in the affirmative to a negative infinitive. Most people understand due to context and tone. It's basically accepted language.

OK. What does that have to do with "could(n't) care less"? Not an infinitive in sight there.