My favorite technique of boldness is to simply tell the truth. One trick is to never prefix statements with “I believe”. Don’t say “I believe x”. If x is true then just say “x”. (If x is untrue then don’t say x and don’t believe x.) The unqualified statement is bolder. Crocker’s rules encode boldness into a social norm.
Most people are really bad at epistemology, so saying “I believe” is a useful marker to remind people you’re saying something that could be wrong. Making the bolder statement is more likely to waste your time on things like fighting over categories rather than figuring out how the world actually is. Saying something unqualified is a bid to claim not only something about reality but also about the categories used to describe it, and “I believe” creates some space for the possibility of using other categories (which should always be there, but lots of people are trapped in their own ontologies in ways that prevent them from realizing this, hence they need a reminder).
Most people are really bad at epistemology, so saying “I believe” is a useful marker to remind people you’re saying something that could be wrong. Making the bolder statement is more likely to waste your time on things like fighting over categories rather than figuring out how the world actually is. Saying something unqualified is a bid to claim not only something about reality but also about the categories used to describe it, and “I believe” creates some space for the possibility of using other categories (which should always be there, but lots of people are trapped in their own ontologies in ways that prevent them from realizing this, hence they need a reminder).