No, that's EXACTLY what people are arguing about. You say "A is ten times smaller than B" when B is already understood to be small compared to something else. The implication in that sentence is that B is already known for its smallness, and A is even smaller. Except, people use that same construction even when B isn't considered small. They use that incorrect connotation when what they're really trying to say is, "B is big, but A is only a tenth as big."

So what you're saying is, "B is already small, and A is even smaller."

Right?

Are you presuming that someone already understands B to be considered small? What is B small compared to?

I am pretty sure that I do not match any of the stereotypes which any of you wish to ascribe to me.

Actually Zilog was a really fun place to work as I learned a lot of stuffs while working there

Math doesn't help in the absence of context. If Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B, but Product B costs $10,000 ... does it really matter? That's a little different than Product B costing $3, right? Right. In real life, context actually matters, or you're just wasting people's time.

Yes, there IS confusion. Are we supposed to infer that the thing that the new 10-times-smaller version is being compared to was already considered small? That's what implied, but nobody knows for sure because the person saying it is lazily using a common, and poorly thought out, construction that doesn't actually tell us that.

OK. But let's say you don't know how big the Small Magellanic Cloud is, relative to, say, the Milky Way, or Andromeda, or anything else. And then someone says, "We've just found a new galaxy, hiding behind a dust cloud, and it's three times smaller than the Magellanic Cloud." What are you supposed to gather from that use?

No, I don't like people conveying information in a way that forces you to go research something they mentioned without providing any useful context. When somebody cites a comparative size, but doesn't explain why (or if) that comparison is meaningful, then it's a waste of time. Especially when the communication is theoretically about science and/or technology.

You just said something that was inaccurate

No, that was you.

If you can prove that the means and the ends are the same thing - your original claim - then provide a reliable citation.

My dictionary says the opposite.

You're missing the point.

When someone says, "The new battery is ten times smaller than the old battery," yes ... we can guess that part of what's meant is, "The new battery is a tenth the size of the old battery."

But there's a reason those are TWO DIFFERENT SENTENCES.

When you use the word smallER in that context, you're communicating that the old battery is small, and the new battery is even smaller. Why? Because you're saying that the new battery has time times the smallness of the old one. That has a completely different connotation than a sentence that suggests that the old battery was what it was (or was large), and the new battery is comparatively small.

The reason we have lots of vocabulary words, adjectives, and constructions is so that we can be nuanced and more precise in simple communication. When you use a sentence that essentially forces the audience to go find out what you actually meant by "ten times smaller" (was the old one small, or huge?) then you've done the opposite of providing useful information. All of that in order to avoid using slightly different words that we also all know?

This is pure laziness, that's all. It's mimicking a sound or phrase without thinking about what's actually being communicated. It's no different than people who say, "I could care less," when they mean exactly the opposite. They are uttering sounds without thinking about the actual words they're using. One small, lazy spoken step for man, part of one cumulative giant leap towards dumbing everybody down.

Well, it's gotta do what it's gotta do to boot the machine.