I interpret this as a simple thinko, not unlike the expression "I could care less". As Al Yankovic says:
'Like "I could care less", That means you do care, At least a little'
Re:Réunion: the postmen of the peaks
by SideburnsOfDoom on Thursday May 06, 2021 @01:02PM
(#27066164)
David Mitchell did a longer piece
I read "next" as referring to the adjacent example, not the temporally later one. So "each one more ___ than its neighbour".
Of course, it's impossible mathematically for each element to be bigger than all its neighbours, for N > 1, but it's OK as a figure of speech.
This is a little off topic, but: I've always been curious about this rendering of this idea. If each thing is more _____ than the next, then the first thing is the most _____ in the set. It's not particularly impressive, really! You just have an ordered set and you saw the exemplar first.
Conversely, "each more _____ than the last" implies that wherever you started, it's just going to keep getting more and more _____. That's surprising! It's a new discovery each time.
...do I have this wrong? Does anyone have an explanation for why some people prefer 'than the next'?