"Seriously, what kind of asshole writes the phrase conditional on the hypothesis that when the word if would do?"
"Well ..." I said.
"Seriously, what kind of asshole writes the phrase conditional on the hypothesis that when the word if would do?"
"Well ..." I said.
It's a longer phrase, so it more clearly separates what comes before and what comes after than 'if' does. This makes sentences easier to parse; parsing natural languages is especially difficult since you expect there to be minor errors.