I might say, "my mental model of this is...", a friend might say, "it's my rising sign"
But neither of us puts the stake in the ground with an unabashed, simple and clear, "Yes."
"My mental model is", "it would seem it's good to", "the prudent option would be", "I probably want", etc, are all ways to put out a thought you have — a thought you might think is right — without identifying with it.
And some people, including me until recently, are doing it continuously. Never phrasing anything in such a way that they can catch themselves later: "oh huh, I was clearly wrong". Example:
— My mental model is that [a piece of software] behaves like X.
— Actually it doesn't.
— Oh, okay.
Technically I was wrong, but practically it doesn't feel the same way. When I prefix everything with "my mental model is", I am never wrong, only my mental models are. And it feels like "nothing bad with having a wrong mental model, a mental model is just something that happens to me".
There are feelings — of a) fully believing something and b) realizing you were 100% wrong — that you can entirely avoid experiencing by adopting a "seems"-heavy talking style. Even an innocent "I think" can do it, sometimes.
And you can go like this for years.
Especially if you're e.g. a consultant (I am a consultant), where the pressure to not be caught being confidently wrong is higher.
The good thing about being confidently wrong is — if I commit to an opinion, I start thinking "but what if I'm wrong" in background. Maybe I'll arrive at something good this way. If I only say "it seems that X", I never do that.
So, I started phrasing things without "it seems" — and currently I am getting mileage out of being confidently wrong. But not enough. I want to be confidently wrong more often.