this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don't want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That's ludicrous!

That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use "less" when they should use "fewer"

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[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca -3 points 2 months ago (8 children)

The phrase "I could care less" makes more sense than "I couldn't care less." They're both idioms and therefore are both considered correct linguistically speaking.

But "I could care less" indicates you would prefer to not have to care about a subject so is expressing that you'd prefer to stop talking about it.

"I couldn't care less" doesn't indicate the current level of caring so you might say "there isn't anything in the world that will make me stop caring about my children; I couldn't care less about my children." Without the idiom those aren't contradictory. It's only because of the idiom there's an assumption the reason the person can't care less is because they don't care at all. But nothing about the phrase indicates this.

The level of concern for something with the phrase "I could care less" is indicated by context and the phrase indicates whatever someone may have assumed about one's concern from the context is actually more than the person actual concern for it.

But people will often say "I couldn't care less" is better than "I could care less". They're wrong and I could care less about their wrong opinions on idioms.

[–] Randomguy@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago

Imagine caring as a value, for example, my care™ about this topic is 2, whereas yours is 5.

In this interpretation, "I don't care" implies that the care™ value of the speaker is 0, by the same logic, saying "I care" implies that their care™ value is greater than 0.

With that in mind, "I could care less" implies there is a care™ value lower than the one they currently hold. Meanwhile, "I couldn't care less" implies the opposite, there is no care™ value lower, which is only true for 0 (AKA "I don't care").

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