Of course. But let's define "better" and question your assumptions.

It is definitely not your sloppy heuristic: that heuristic is ageist and should be discarded.

Is it "interested in the field" vs. "interested in money"? That's highly debatable and depends on the company. For a big corporation that moves slowly and has a lot of grunt work, I'll most likely choose "interested in money" over someone who is going to get bored with the work there and focus on their side projects instead. For a startup early hire, probably "interested in the field". But I'd have to keep a very close eye on burnout.

There is a reason most engineers hate the interviewing process and one of those is the endemic abuse of heuristics. Consider improving your interviewing process instead of defending it. Some of your competition already is improving it, and they will hire the excellent folks that you pass by. Ineffective tricks in an attempt to shortcut an actually thorough process are probably never going to go away. But that doesn't mean you need to continue to participate in that. You could in fact "show why you're better".