Hacker News Reader

Exactly. It's presented as an exhaustive list, making it a false dichotomy:

"A situation in which two alternative points of view are presented as the only options, when others are available."

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/false_dichotomy

In idiomatic English, "or" can imply a dichotomy as you suggest or an incomplete list, which was my intention. I wasn't thinking about the ambiguity when I wrote it, so that's my fault.

Fair enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com