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Emily comments on Folk grammar and morality - Less Wrong
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Note also that although the distinction between count-nouns and mass-nouns is a real one, a) it does not always match up with some physical difference between a countable and uncountable quantity, and b) the people who insist that "less" should only ever be used with mass-nouns are talking nonsense. "Less" with count-nouns is found all over the place in the speech and writing of competent language users.
For a) it would be good to see an example. For b), "should only ever be used" of course sounds prescriptivist; nevertheless, the distinction exists, even if it's often blurred, and countable v uncountable is the right (and only) way to explain it.
One common linguistic treadmill is <plural count noun for small items> → <singular mass noun for stuff consisting of those items> → <singular count noun for a specific quantity of that stuff, in other words for a specific group of those items>. The clearest example in English is ‘agenda’ (originally the plural of ‘agendum’, an obsolete word in place of which we now use ‘agenda item’), which has now generated its own plural. Other examples: ‘algae’ (still the plural of ‘alga’ to biologists but a mass noun to layfolk) and ‘virus’ (which went backwards when we learnt more about the subject; originally a mass noun, now a count noun with a plural).
Any specific usage can be justified on its own terms, but the whole process is the old philosophical problem of distinguishing a set of things from the things themselves.