> But the majority of them do exceed that very low bar, so it’s simply not that critical of a hinderance most of the time.

Describing not having catastrophically bad social skills as a “very low” bar is not a valid take when it comes to the world of computer science. I remember when visiting Carnegie Mellon as a senior in high school and evaluating their comp sci program, how the guides suddenly got very serious when they informed our parents(not the prospective students) that a course on hygiene was required freshman year and could not be waived. I’ve also worked with near limitless number of engineers who think they have the social skills down and then don’t understand why no one wants to work with them when they will do shit like call someone else’s project they’ve worked on for months pointless or useless in a group setting without even trying to approach said coworker with even a modicum of social awareness.

Those kinds of behaviors don’t show up in a population where having non catastrophically bad social skills is a “very low bar”

> You appear to be reading absolute implications into my comments, and/or inserting your own conjectures which aren’t there on a plain reading.

I think we’re coming at this with different axioms. You seem to believe that social skills are trivial and don’t matter next to the hard sciences that people grind away on. I am coming from one where I have to constantly make excuses or apologies for various people in software engineering or comp sci because they appear to be literally incapable of empathy or understanding that other people might have a different viewpoint than theirs.

Given my axiom I think your are handwaving away a lot, and that’s where you see my statements as inserted conjectures.