The intended usage is to make explicit how the speaker came to think whatever follows. Of course, this is different from hedging with phrases like “I could be wrong”. I remember thinking at the time that it would be useful to port the use of evidentials to some English conversations.
When I was studying Lojban, I learned about the concept of “evidentials” such as
I conclude
I expect
I opine
(complete list at https://lojban.org/publications/cll/cll_v1.1_xhtml-section-chunks/section-evidentials.html)
The intended usage is to make explicit how the speaker came to think whatever follows. Of course, this is different from hedging with phrases like “I could be wrong”. I remember thinking at the time that it would be useful to port the use of evidentials to some English conversations.