Since “caring” is relative within each individual, “don’t care about X” can losslessly transform to “Care about non-X more than is claimed”. Many people claim to care a lot about intelligence or knowledge from education. Since there are cheaper (and more effective) ways to test for that, it does seem very clear that there are other factors in education which people care about. Not “don’t care about intelligence or knowledge”, but “don’t care as much as claimed about intelligence or knowledge”.
In fact, people care a lot about conformity and willingness to participate in ritual. They just don’t like to say so out loud.
I don’t think that’s how humans work. We don’t have a fixed pool of caring like in this video from my childhood , we instead have things that we care about. Some people care more, some less. There’s certainly some interaction here, if I start caring about Y a lot I am likely to care about X less, and certainly likely to devote less resources to X, but I think it’s closer to floating sum than zero sum, and you can’t interchange in this way.
Also, note that ‘don’t care about X’ is a much stronger claim than ‘care about non-X more than claimed.’ And that in realistic context they do not mean the same thing. People often try to make this transformation to make people look worse (e.g. ‘I care about the rule of law’ becomes ‘you don’t care about the victims’), and it’s very bad.
Since “caring” is relative within each individual, “don’t care about X” can losslessly transform to “Care about non-X more than is claimed”. Many people claim to care a lot about intelligence or knowledge from education. Since there are cheaper (and more effective) ways to test for that, it does seem very clear that there are other factors in education which people care about. Not “don’t care about intelligence or knowledge”, but “don’t care as much as claimed about intelligence or knowledge”.
In fact, people care a lot about conformity and willingness to participate in ritual. They just don’t like to say so out loud.
I don’t think that’s how humans work. We don’t have a fixed pool of caring like in this video from my childhood , we instead have things that we care about. Some people care more, some less. There’s certainly some interaction here, if I start caring about Y a lot I am likely to care about X less, and certainly likely to devote less resources to X, but I think it’s closer to floating sum than zero sum, and you can’t interchange in this way.
Also, note that ‘don’t care about X’ is a much stronger claim than ‘care about non-X more than claimed.’ And that in realistic context they do not mean the same thing. People often try to make this transformation to make people look worse (e.g. ‘I care about the rule of law’ becomes ‘you don’t care about the victims’), and it’s very bad.