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Apologies for the long delay, as I took a "technology-less" vacation after writing this...But, Yes. I've always wondered the same thing... as along with your example, it seems like failure being measured as a cost could be applied to a number of concepts. I can't really speak for others (of course), but I believe that "murdering" and "learning" being treated as "concepts" to assign value to can be part of the reason.
If you don't mind.. I'll rephrase your example because my phrase which you quoted (sounds busted, heh), but "driving up the value...elsewhere" does not seem cohesive to the preface, "we all likely believe some information should not be learned". In hindsight it seems reactionary, as when I wrote it...I was not considering my own position.
"We all likely believe that the (act of) murder is bad, but we need to always keep in mind that (restriction of the act) making it illegal does not make it go away. It only increases the (_difficulty_ of performing the act of murder, which can have an effect on) the profits of the hitmen."
Both of our examples are with regards to assigning a value to a concept, be it the act of murder, or the act of restricting information. In order for us to understand these concepts, we are required to know about or experience said "thing", and also have a method to compare or benchmark said "thing". So, only through comparision, we're able to quantify its value to ourselves. So, unless the result is observable, in regards to increasing the rewards for those whom "murder" or "inform", there's no immediate way to benchmark whether something still aligns with our values or not.
Although, I do think that in some cases, it should be as simple as having an "extra" thought about it...However, "costs" being measured as a unit of time is not something that we all seem to be equally aware of when we assign it as a value to our desires/morals/needs. Despite time being a constant, it's been suggested that we perceive time differently depending on how enjoyable or non-enjoyable our experiences are (dopamine). So I think comparisons of a monetary cost (in terms of "murder profits") and a conceptual cost (in terms of time spent) has this additional factor that makes it difficult to value between us.
I think that we'll need to figure this out at some point to be able to clearly distinguish these things to children. Not being able to distinguish fact from fiction can lead to the propagation of non-factual information that will be then be discerned as fact as dictated by the overall consensus of a said individual's community. Our present tools on the internet are very good at determining relevancy (which is debatable of course), but they are not the best at determining verity or distinguishing bias.
We're have to assume that a source of factual information is altruistic and that they actually do the research in order to distinguish one from another. But this in itself is very fragile as if it violates the facts that a community already believes (such as when said altruistic person is in actuality not altruistic), there is no simple way to revert the information that has already propagated throughout said communities. Being able to clearly distinguish facts from opinions, enables one to reinforce the idea of what's factual...and avoid the potential issue of disputing a fact when comparing it against a differing opinion which is being misinterpreted as a fact.
I think this is critical, because certain structures rely on being able to discern fact from opinion, which has manifested itself in the national policies of some countries, but they of course can be easily misrepresented if an individual only consumes information (factual or otherwise) from a similar source of said information.