What concerns me is that I see quite a lot of writers who don't know the difference between fact and opinion. Without that, the reader doesn't have much hope. Especially when the writer has some incentive to muddy the waters.

I'm all for pieces clearly from a personal perspective. There one can drop the redundant "I think" bits. But often dropping the qualifier turns it from a statement about one person to a universal statement, as with the title of the article. For me this erases the many interesting possibilities in between.

For example, a post title something like, "Which programmers find Ruby more readable than Python?" is way more interesting. The universal is false, but I'm sure it's true for some people and false for others. An exploration of that could lead to interesting ways to think about languages. E.g., is it better for novice programmers? For programmers from non-engineering backgrounds? For programmers with difference cognitive styles or capabilities?

This has always been true. However, the way that you should distinguish fact from opinion is analyzing the content. You should not rely on other people to explain to you which things are facts and which things are opinions.

In a world where people (in general) are capable of distinguishing fact from opinion (most of the time), you can omit the "I think", "I believe", "I feel" crap. In a world where people are bad at distinguishing fact from opinion, you can't rely on the "I think", "I believe", "I feel" crap because writers wouldn't be able to use them correctly.

That the reader should distinguish fact from opinion in no way absolves the writer of doing that first and expressing clearly which is which.

> "Which programmers find Ruby more readable than Python?"

What if you don't care about analyzing the psychologies of programmers, and just want to say why one thing is more readable than another thing?

Readable for whom? And how could you possibly understand why something is readable for a given person or group without touching upon psychological topics? Reading is a mental experience that varies from person to person in many ways. Reading code even more so.

I get this, and I've started to write this way, because it gets a better response; but it feels to me like it's designed to maximize an emotional response and not a cognitive response, and find I have less trust in people who write this way (Which is most things, i get)

I do wonder how this style of writing has impacted the psychology of argument, I imagine there are others who read this style of writing and assume it is written in stone or as an objective statement, and not a subjective one. This may just be human nature.

I have to say I appreciated but also laughed at the sheer number of the qualifiers you're discussing in your post... "it feels to me", "I find I", "I do wonder", "I imagine", "this may"

I find it makes for less combative discussions. So I like it.

I'd say that these qualifiers are much more useful in informal communication, like HN, and inappropriate for long-form stuff like essays. Essays are longer, more coherent, and denser.

I think it’s more distasteful in the modern clickbait blog world then more intellectual and well thought out books/essays/etc, where your perspective is not designed for a purely emotional response.

“Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.”

Use the Active Voice.

New Rails 8 feature? (I’ll see myself out).

Oh. So this is why clickbait and trolling have increased so dramatically? The kids are being encouraged to do it by their teachers?

Eternal September gets worse when their teachers are teaching them bad habits from the get-go.

you think click bait and trolling have increased dramatically

In your opinion eternal September....

> you think click bait and trolling have increased dramatically

Assuming "click bait", "trolling" and "dramatically" are all either explicitly defined or implicitly defined by consensus or what have you, this would not be a matter of opinion but of fact, so stating "I think" would either be incorrect or would be an admission of uncertainty about whether the fact is true. If he is correct and honest, he has no reason to add the phrase. If he is dishonest or incorrect, he has reason not to add the phrase.

Additionally, in the context of the full sentence, it would imply that the subject pronoun "this" is causing his thoughts rather than causing the object of his thoughts, but I know what you mean. I think.

Not that way - only when it's someone else's opinion, not mine.