Part of our difficulty to understand each other may be that "wrong" is often used to imply some sort of value judgment. I should stress I'm not using it in that way, just as a statement of fact.
I would strongly assert that X years ago, when "I couldn't care less" was the only popularly used version, saying "I could care less" was both lazy and ignorant: lazy because it's dropping a syllable for the ease of the speaker despite making it more difficult for the listener; ignorant because the speaker doesn't realise they're doing it.
Whether it's lazy and ignorant now is a harder question to answer. I'm not familiar with North American usage of the phrase.
I guess my comments may come across as slightly antagonistic, but I don’t mean them that way at all. I’m just very excited about the topic of language in general.
I should tell you that I have a masters degree in linguistics, so I’m not pulling any of this out of thin air. Most of the arguments I’ve made are more or less generally understood among the linguistic community. Most of the objections and issues you are raising are the kind of questions that are dealt with in undergraduate linguistics courses.
I don’t have time to continue discussing this today unfortunately, but if you’re really interested in this stuff, you should reader The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. He does a far better job at systematically explaining these issues than I do. Something like The Foundations of Language by Jackendoff is much more technical but also a very good introduction.
Oh no, don't worry. Quick-fire written discussions are hard, so I don't hold any antagonism against you. No offence taken, and I hope you understand I too was writing out of interest rather than a desire to be argumentative.
I was wrong in my assumptions about the current usage of the phrase, as you've already pointed out, so I concede the argument.
I'm very interested in the use of language too, which is why I enjoyed the discussion, though I've never formally studied it. Thank you for the recommendations.
This debate is an instance of a strange phenomenon which I don't yet know yet understand how to resolve.
If someone wrote a serious piece on the internet, containing in all seriousness, the phrase "I isn't very happy about dat" then it's certainly possible to write an interesting essay on culture, the use of colloquialism, evolution of language etc., but I also think it's equally valid for me to summarize my position by saying "Your grammar is incorrect, and you've spelled 'that' wrongly. Please don't do it again in a serious article.".
In much the same way, if someone wrote "integration is reverse of differentiation" I could explain at length why this is not true but often it's more effective to accept it as an approximately true statement and move on to discussing more important things.
There is an excellent page in the introduction of Jackendoff’s book that I think is a great illustration of just how complex language is, to be trying to talk about it in an ad hoc manner.
I would strongly assert that X years ago, when "I couldn't care less" was the only popularly used version, saying "I could care less" was both lazy and ignorant: lazy because it's dropping a syllable for the ease of the speaker despite making it more difficult for the listener; ignorant because the speaker doesn't realise they're doing it.
Whether it's lazy and ignorant now is a harder question to answer. I'm not familiar with North American usage of the phrase.