I didn't say they wouldn't try to save the carriers. I said they would have hedged their bets by also dispersing some of the battleships. Your 90% confidence in your whole conjunct opinion requires a greater-than-90% confidence in the proposition that while saving the carriers, the people involved, all steeped in battleship supremacy/prestige for decades, would deliberately leave all the battleships vulnerable, rather than disperse even one or two as a hedge.

But they did disperse some of the battleships. That's why all the battleships at Pearl Harbor were outdated classes. They didn't have that many outdated carriers, and carriers retain their value more over the course of time than battleships and battlecruisers do.

The ratio value:tonnage of capital ships sunk at Pearl harbor was significantly lower than the ratio value:tonnage of capital ships in the surviving fleets in the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere. This was never about carriers versus battleships, it was about vessels with high value versus vessels with low value.