system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The Fender Stratocaster is superior to the Gibson Les Paul

Both are iconic, fantastic guitars.  The Stratocaster has been played by greats such as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.  The Les Paul has been the mainstay of other great guitarists such as Slash and Zakk Wylde.  By reputation alone, either guitar would appear to be vitally important throughout the history of all forms of rock music.  However, I believe that the Stratocaster has a few important areas where it is superior.  

The Stratocaster is much more common in other genres of music than the Les Paul is.  Great Blues artists like Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Stevie Ray Vaughan all are known for playing Stratocasters.  While country music is more known for the Stratocaster's sibling the Telecaster, you will see country artists like Vince Gill play a Stratocaster from time to time.

A good guitarist can get a wide range of sounds out of either the Les Paul or the Stratocaster, but I believe the Stratocaster can offer more.  Les Paul type guitars are equipped with dual coil humbucker pickups, which combined with the weight and materials of the guitar are the reason for their iconic deep resonating sound.  To make them more versatile, most modern Les Pauls are equipped with coil tapping or coil splitting.  The result is that you can make the pickups act more like a single coil.  This eliminates the humbucking (sort of a form of noise cancellation) and sounds more strat-like.  

However, it is still very far from the iconic "honk" you can get with a single coil Fender pickup.  Most Stratocasters come in the "SSS" configuration, which is three single coil pickups.  If you turn up the volume on the guitar all the way, and place the pickup selector to position 4, it uses the middle and neck pickup together, and sounds more similar to the sound you would get with a humbucker-equipped guitar than the humbucker-equipped guitars can sound like single coil.  If that is not sufficient and you vastly prefer the sound of humbuckers, Fender makes HSH and other pickup layouts to give you humbuckers.  I've never tried these, so I can't really comment on them.

Another feature that I feel is superior in the Stratocaster is the shape of the components of the guitar.  The flat fretboard on the Les Paul has the strings a little too close together for my taste in comparison to the more roomy Stratocaster.  Also, the thinner neck makes it easier for me to wrap my thumb around if I were trying to play some chords similarly to how Jimi Hendrix would play them.  The cutaway design of the body is much easier to deal with on the Stratocaster and allows easier access to the higher frets.  The bridge is another factor for me, since the bridge on the Les Paul sticks out further, while the bridge on the Stratocaster is much lower, making it easier to move your hand around while sticking close to the body of the guitar.  That being said, I will give some points to the Les Paul for the angled head being superior, as well as the tuners being better on most Les Pauls that I've played.  That doesn't negate the other concerns though.

To summarize, I own and play both a Stratocaster and a Les Paul.  My next guitar will probably be a PRS Custom 24 because I feel like it provides a really good middle ground and has it's own unique improvements over each.  I love both guitars, but I like my Stratocaster a little bit more.  Change my view and explain to me how the Gibson Les Paul is a superior guitar.
gpt
So most of your argument is listing things the strat can do that a typical Les Paul can't. But you need to also take into account the things a Les Paul can do that a stratocaster can't:

* Since a les paul has a volume control for each pick-up (not like a 1 volume master control like the strat) you can set one pick-up volume to zero and then use the pick-up selector as a kill switch. This is very useful if you are going for that robotic/trippy effect used by many bands like RATM or NIN.

* Similar to above, you can set the volume to one pick-up to be very loud and the other to be softer. So if you are playing a song where you switch from playing softer rhythm tones to more distorted lead tones you can already have this set so all you have to do is switch pickups without using any peadl or adjusting your amp. A strat you would you need to use the switch AND turn the volume control to taste.

* The shorter scale of the Les paul makes string bending much easier for people without a lot of finger strength.

* Some people with smaller fingers prefer this shorter scale and smaller string spacing because it makes chords which require long finger stretching easier. For example, a Gsus2 on the lowest three strings like this:   (3-5-7-x-x-x)

* You pointed out the Strat is better for playing with the thumb on the low E, but as someone who uses that technique on both strats and les pauls, it depends entirely on the neck. There are Les pauls with thick necks, sure, but you may not know that the neck shape they were using in the 70s was about as thin as the strat neck shape. So it just depends what period/specs the les paul is.

* You pointed out that people like the cutaway bodies of the strat, but keep in mind a lot of players don't like running into the neck heel when they try to slide to the upper frets. Strats have a noticable square shape where the neck meets the body in back, where as a Les paul has a curve leading into the neck heel which makes it more comfortable for some people.

> If you turn up the volume on the guitar all the way, and place the pickup selector to position 4, it uses the middle and neck pickup together, and sounds more similar to the sound you would get with a humbucker-equipped guitar than the humbucker-equipped guitars can sound like single coil.

I also wanted to point out this is objectively not true. Position 4 of a strat actually reduces mid-range frequencies, and humbuckers are known for having more mids. It will take out the hum if the strat middle pickup is set up for reverse polarity, but the sonic signature of the frequencies is actually about as far from a humbucker as you can get.