be less of a worry than real stupidity, Hunger Strikes Have Long Served as a Tool of Nonviolent Protest

Majdi Mohammed/Associated Press

Hunger Strikes Have Long Served as a Tool of Nonviolent Protest

Governments sometimes resort to force-feeding, a practice denounced as inhumane. But deaths like that of a Palestinian

"I think artificial intelligence will, for decades to come, be less of a worry than real stupidity", Martin Rees tells The Economist 

Martin Rees on the Future of Science and Humanity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNNgjY_bewg

than

Pronunciation /ð(ə)n//ðan/

CONJUNCTION & PREPOSITION

• 1Introducing the second element in a comparison.

  as preposition ‘he was much smaller than his son’

  ‘Jack doesn't know any more than I do’
• 2Used in expressions introducing an exception or contrast.

  as preposition ‘he claims not to own anything other than his home’

  as conjunction ‘they observe rather than act’
• 3conjunction Used in expressions indicating one thing happening immediately after another.

  ‘scarcely was the work completed than it was abandoned’

Usage

Traditional grammar holds that personal pronouns following than should be in the subjective rather than the objective case: he is smaller than she rather than he is smaller than her. This is based on an analysis of than by which than is a conjunction and the personal pronoun (‘she’) is standing in for a full clause: he is smaller than she is. However, it is arguable that than in this context is not a conjunction but a preposition, similar grammatically to words like with, between, or for. In this case the personal pronoun is objective: he is smaller than her is standard in just the same way as, for example, I work with her is standard (not I work with she). Whatever the grammatical analysis, the evidence confirms that sentences like he is smaller than she are uncommon in modern English and only ever found in formal contexts. Uses such as he is smaller than her, on the other hand, are almost universally accepted. For more explanation see personal pronoun and between

Origin

Old English than(ne), thon(ne), thænne, originally the same word as then.

less

PRONOUN & DETERMINER

• 1A smaller amount of; not as much.

  as determiner ‘the less time spent there, the better’

  as pronoun ‘storage is less of a problem than it used to be’

  ‘they returned in less than an hour’

  1. 1.1 Fewer in number.
     as pronoun ‘a population of less than 200,000’

     See less below

ADJECTIVE

archaic 

• Of lower rank or importance.

  ‘James the Less’

ADVERB

• 1To a smaller extent; not so much.

  ‘cut out less important material’

  ‘that this is a positive stereotype makes it no less a stereotype’

  1. 1.1less thanFar from; certainly not.
     ‘Mitch looked less than happy’

PREPOSITION

• Before subtracting (something); minus.

  ‘£900,000 less tax’

Usage

In standard English less should only be used with uncountable things (less money, less time). With countable things it is incorrect to use less (less people and less words); strictly speaking, correct use is fewer people and fewer words. See also few