probably.. suppose... it seems to me.. I hate it when people try and hedge their opinions.
I hate when people make no effort to hedge their opinions. It comes off as lacking nuance.
Why? Hedging is fine. I think it's important to accurately communicate how certain you are of a thing. Constant hedging is annoying, but so is stating everything as if it's a fact, despite how sure you really are.
Communicating confidence is useful.
I totally agree. My beef was with people using vague words like "probably". What does probably mean? 51% likely? 55% likely? 90% likely? It contains no sense of probability, that can be agreed upon.
If you're going to attach a probability to an opinion, use "most likely", or "almost certainly", or "unlikely".
You are right. I could re-phrase my comment - all statements about the future which don't contain notion of probability are pure gambling.
I totally agree. except "probably" contains a weak notion of probability . What does probably mean? 51% likely? 55% likely? 90% likely? If you're going to attach a probability to an opinion, use "most likely", or "almost certainly", or "unlikely". That to me, isn't hedging an opinion. That's attaching a real probability to the outcome.