I suspect you’re reacting to the actual beliefs (disbelief in your example), rather than the word usage. In common parlance, “skeptical” means “assign low probability”, and that usage is completely normal and understandable.
The ability to dismiss expertise you don’t like is built into humans, not a feature of the word “skeptical”. You could easily replace “I am skeptical” with “I don’t believe” or “I don’t think it’s likely” or just “it’s not really true”.
I think that “skeptical” works better as a status move. If I say I don’t believe you, that makes us two equals who disagree. If I say I am skeptical… I kinda imply that you are not. Similarly, a third party now has the options to either join the skeptical or the non-skeptical side of the debate.
(Or maybe I’m just overthinking things, of course.)
I suspect you’re reacting to the actual beliefs (disbelief in your example), rather than the word usage. In common parlance, “skeptical” means “assign low probability”, and that usage is completely normal and understandable.
The ability to dismiss expertise you don’t like is built into humans, not a feature of the word “skeptical”. You could easily replace “I am skeptical” with “I don’t believe” or “I don’t think it’s likely” or just “it’s not really true”.
I think that “skeptical” works better as a status move. If I say I don’t believe you, that makes us two equals who disagree. If I say I am skeptical… I kinda imply that you are not. Similarly, a third party now has the options to either join the skeptical or the non-skeptical side of the debate.
(Or maybe I’m just overthinking things, of course.)