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No, it’s literally true. For different people in different contexts “you’re an idiot” can be both offensive and not. Even Intention to offend doesn’t matter in the slightest. For instance if I don’t care about somebody’s opinion, his statement that I’m an idiot is simply ignored.

Offense is taken, not given.

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That's assuming you have a choice to not be affected by someone's opinion. If there was a pervasive culture of people posting articles on HN casually assuming that you're an idiot you'd find it much harder to ignore.

And if people on hiring committees, in fact just one person on each hiring committee, absorbed this by simply not having time and effort to expend to mentally challenge that assumption, you're pretty screwed, all philosophical arguments aside. Assuming you have to work for a living.

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