From a young age, we learn the concept of ‘more or less’.
This comes in very helpful when doing math; if Johnny has 7 apples, and Mary has 1, who has more apples?
However, I don’t recall being taught that ‘more’ and ‘less’ are two sides of the same coin.
By definition, Mary also has more of something that Johnny has less of, exactly in proportion to Johnny’s surplus of apples:
Mary has the capacity and opportunity to collect her 2nd through 7th apples. Or, she has the space and the freedom to choose to only carry 1. In essence, she has the negative, the inverse of having 6 additional apples.
Mary has 6 more ‘not-apples’ than Johnny.
More and less go together, but if we choose only to look at one side of the equation (the ‘or’), then we aren’t seeing reality clearly.
Matt Fried 