I liked this comment, and upvoted it, partly because of its well-chosen counter-illustration, but also for reasons of style. It is relatively blunt, but the padding that it carries has a nice "rationalist" flavor. "I'd ... want to see ... numbers ... before presuming ...". "This comes across as ..." rather than simply "This is ...".

You have correctly reverse-engineered how I wrote it ;-)

One virtue of the culture of observed blunt communication that we cultivate here is that we get plenty of practice at receiving criticism, plus plenty of negative feedback if we respond by taking offense.

I really don't see it as a very blunt culture. (I suppose I should stress this more.) A frequently difficult one, but not blunt. Most comments are thoughtful and the commenters take due care. Some are indeed blunt to the point of rudeness, and you'll see their good but blunt comments get lots of upvotes for content and downvotes for tone.