"I think" is a modifier on certainty the way it's normally used, not merely redundant information (as the literal reading suggests). It is generally used when t

"I think" is a modifier on certainty the way it's normally used, not merely redundant information (as the literal reading suggests). It is generally used when the person isn't certain. Similarly, all of the phrases you mentiom carry information about how the comment should be interpreted. Not a fan of X: I'm generally biased against X, so my opinion they did well here carries extra inferential weight. Don't mean to be rude: I don't know how to say this politely and request that you "iron man" the question or statement. There are arguments about if you truly need to say such things, but I'm generally on the side that rudeness is better than censorship. I'm not claiming X is right: I explicitly disclaim a typical inference one would draw from making an argument that something about X is correct. What you see as "noise" are inclusions of internal probabilistic weights, parse requests, other meta-comments, etc.