I'm not so sure. I agree that weasel words can destroy a piece of writing, but a complete lack of them can come off badly too. The main effect of killing the qualifiers in your writing is increasing the confidence in the tone of the piece. Obviously, we all have different levels of confidence in our many different opinions, and if you stop using qualifiers all together, you lose the ability to distinguish between different points on the confidence continuum.
If I write with the same confidence about two opinions I have, one I am vey sure of and one I am doubtful about, then I have failed to communicate well. Furthermore, writing in a way that expresses complete confidence in your opinions can change the tone of the conversation that it sparks. When you qualify your opinions, you signal that you are more willing to discuss that point. Speaking with complete surety can shut down a comment thread or turn it more antagonistic.
I like your point that the author can assign different levels of confidence to different parts of their writing, but the reader shouldn't automatically mistake the confident sections for facts and the unconfident sections for falsehoods, that seems to be conflating two signals into one.
When you qualify your opinions, you signal that you are more willing to discuss that point. Speaking with complete surety can shut down a comment thread or turn it more antagonistic.
If I write with the same confidence about two opinions I have, one I am vey sure of and one I am doubtful about, then I have failed to communicate well. Furthermore, writing in a way that expresses complete confidence in your opinions can change the tone of the conversation that it sparks. When you qualify your opinions, you signal that you are more willing to discuss that point. Speaking with complete surety can shut down a comment thread or turn it more antagonistic.