I think is point is that if your accent is so strong that you are not understandable, then odds are you either are ignorant that it is a problem or are too dumb

I think is point is that if your accent is so strong that you are not understandable, then odds are you either are ignorant that it is a problem or are too dumb to consider it a possibility, since otherwise you would have taken steps to improve it to the point that you are intelligible. Now that there has been a shitstorm pg can no longer delve into specifics anymore without inflaming hurt feelings, but I imagine he is talking about people who have incredibly extreme accents and are extraordinarily hard to understand. I have worked with a number of people like this, they were ultimately unable to live up to their potential, and I would characterize them as "clueless" in this regard since I would be genuinely shocked if they were at the very least aware nevermind actively trying to correct the problem. It defies belief to think that these folks could not have dramatically improved their accent had they identified it as a problem and spent a few hours each week of dedicated effort to improve it. This point is of course lost on people who are eager to be offended. If you have a ridiculously strong accent then it's hard to argue that it is unreasonably difficult to go from there to simply being intelligible. People are instead focused on the difficulty of losing an accent altogether which is of course very hard and completely irrelevant.