I consider, on the contrary, caveating and hedging annoying 'typical redditor'/internet behaviors: they care more about being "technically correct" than conveying the message. On the internet, if you make even the tiniest mistake or simplification, someone will criticize you, so you're trained to always hedge. In normal discussions with friends you can just make general statements and people get what you mean.
replyYou aren't arguing a "contrary" to what I actually wrote above. You're arguing with a strawman Redditor, and a point adjacent to what I was posting about - experts responding to topics within their actual realm of expertise.
replySo I won't be addressing this, for those reasons and others.
In my experience actual experts don’t hedge because they have a perspective. They might say “I think”, but avoid weaseling.
replyMy experience has been very much the opposite of yours.
replyTo an expert communicating with a layperson is a form of compression. You must turn some very complex idea into one that you suppose the other person can grasp given their limited frame of reference. It's always lossy, and you have to guess how much you can remove without sounding patronizing or being inaccurate. It's tough, and the more you know the tougher it gets.
Ever done that "explain what happens when I visit Google in my web browser" interview question?
A sales guy will answer in a sentence. An engineer might be able to talk about it for several days and still not be sure they didn't miss anything important. That much knowledge can actually be detrimental to communication.