Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

This was just a statement about--as I understand it--the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all being the same God. Just that during the pre-Jesus time the texts understand him one way, Jesus changed the Covenant and thus God should be understood another way, and then Islam declared that Jesus was just a prophet (false prophet?) and the understanding of God should now be superseded by the prophecies of Mohammed. (Oh, and then the Mormons came along--same God, dismissed Islam, added a bunch of malarkey).

Christians believe that Jesus is God, while Jews and Muslims don't, so they clearly don't worship the same God. (The Mormons are straight up polytheistic, and the various denominations of Mormonism even disagree with each other on the identity of their Gods, so you really fowl things up when you toss them in.) To say that they all worship the same God based on the Abraham connection is vague and misleading.

At that point you might as well just say that all religions worship the same God, the one that created mankind. 

So... Another thing about working through various sources.

It's VERY common to talk about something with a certain level of spin, and to talk about the portions that you want to call attention to, while omitting the things that aren't so flattering to the point you're making. 

This is something you should always look at whenever someone is obviously trying to persuade. You can say things that are completely true, but by leaving out key parts of the story, a reader doesn't know what they don't know... And thus the narrative can be what you want, while you're not lying, but you're not exactly telling the whole truth. 

So you should approach things defensively. "What aren't they telling me, and does it matter?" 

This is why you should read people on both sides of an issue. Because usually the other side will tell you what your side isn't telling you. Your own side never will. 

I have a couple of things that are currently happening in my day job that are perfectly dealing with this--the other side is saying something to attract attention ONLY to the areas in which they have an advantage. And I'm in the process (already published one thing, but moving farther) of getting ready to highlight what they aren't saying. But only Mike and utee would be interested in that, so I won't bore y'all here 

Grandaddy nailed it with these three fine observations he shared with me when I was young. 

1.  If someone is trying to get an emotional response from you, they're trying to manipulate you. 

2. If it takes more than a breath to explain something in essence, there is a fair amount of bull shit present. 

3. Pussy is like a snowstorm.  You never know when it's coming for sure, or how long it'll be around.  

He was a character.  

Again, epistemology. The thread title: "How do you know what you think you know?"

I'm basing my prediction on knowledge of engineering, physics, economics, and my history of working in a corporate environment and observing how competitive companies in the same industry operate. I also base it on nearly a decade of observance of how the EV / charging industry has developed thus far, and from discussions with EV owners about what they primarily do and don't care about. The market is already moving away from the "fast charging / gas station" model outside of long-distance trips, which already means that the one time EV users would want/need battery swaps is something most people do maybe 0-3 times per year, so it's the exception not the rule.

You state you're basing your prediction on "whatever reason". You simply think it's what the industry wants/needs, and they'll just "figure it out". And because of the weight of batteries, you're basing it on the development future battery technology which doesn't today, and may never, exist.

It's true that because it's a future prediction, none of us is "right". But from the standpoint of this thread, would you not agree that I have a more sound basis for my prediction than you yours?    

Again, you said:

In the case of this discussion, you seem to have a strong opinion based on "whatever reason". If you had spent much time pondering the issue, you would have met my arguments with counterarguments, not "well I just think this will happen."

The answer to "How do you know what you think you know?" shouldn't, IMHO, be "for whatever reason".

Bold 1:  I think we could say your prediction is based on a continued, linear progression based on the past.  This is a great foundation for making predictions.  I do it all the time.  It's sound in baseball predictions and such.  I have nothing disparaging to say about it.
But I just view the EV battery thing as an unexplored paradigm shift, and so that unknown makes a prudent, linear progression prediction perhaps a little more wonky or unlikely (ultimately perhaps not, again, time will tell).

Bold 2:  Sure, but sometimes.....it IS "for whatever reason."  More specifically, we may think something and not know why we think it.  We may prefer something, yet not know why we prefer it.  I'm afraid your comment here is related to the "we can't say we don't know, so we have to come up with something" ideology.  It may not be, and that's fine.
But if I am unable to pinpoint the WHY I think something, I should not guess or pull something out of my ass.  Agreed?

On the journey, Isaac wonders about the purpose of the kindling wood and is told that God will provide a lamb to be sacrificed. Then he is tied to the wood and his father raises the knife. At that moment an angel tells Prophet Abraham to stop and that he can slaughter a ram instead.
In the Quran, the name of the child is not mentioned, but other Islamic traditions tell us distinctly that the child to be slaughtered is Ishmael.
Islamic scholars also stress that Ishmael understood and was willing to comply with God’s commandment.

I love how these religious stories are studied, shared, and rehashed, all through the centuries when the real focus should be that slaughtering a ram doesn't do anything.  

Silliness.

Personally I feel sorry for you OAM, in may not be true in "real" life, but you present yourself as a pretty unhappy person on this site. Life is too short.

I live a frustrating life.  Teaching poor kids sucks more often than not. 

Many/most/some people tend to look at humanity with awe and consider how awesome we are.  I can't help but focus on how razor thin we are beyond being shaved chimps.

We're REALLY good at taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back as a species.  But yet we remain, somehow.

Bold 1:  I think we could say your prediction is based on a continued, linear progression based on the past.  This is a great foundation for making predictions.  I do it all the time.  It's sound in baseball predictions and such.  I have nothing disparaging to say about it.
But I just view the EV battery thing as an unexplored paradigm shift, and so that unknown makes a prudent, linear progression prediction perhaps a little more wonky or unlikely (ultimately perhaps not, again, time will tell).

Not just based on linearity, although that's important. I think that the actual battery energy density is not going to progress fast enough, even including the idea of solid state batteries. Batteries for BEVs today frequently weigh upwards of 1000 lbs. IMHO the infrastructure needed for battery swaps would make things infeasible until you get that down to an order of magnitude less weight or so, and the engineering of making a car frame that can accommodate battery swaps requires the same improvement. 

In most industries, you hear researchers talking about the future of their technology. I'm not hearing researchers even speculating about what gets us an order of magnitude advance in energy density. Which makes me think that it's much farther out than a decade.

There are bigger reasons I don't think it'll happen, not least because I've talked to a lot of BEV owners and not a single one has expressed a desire for battery swaps. In fact, turning basic external belief about the industry on its head, one of the biggest lifestyle changes to going BEV isn't dealing with range anxiety... It's the relief at basically never even having to think about "filling up". If you charge at home, every morning your car is ready to go and it might only be a handful of times per year that you drive far enough in one day that you exhaust what you have in the morning. One of the guys I know with a BEV was talking about the annoyance driving his wife's car (ICEV) because for the first time in months he had to actually pay attention to the fuel level. 

IMHO it's a solution in search of a problem. 

Bold 2:  Sure, but sometimes.....it IS "for whatever reason."  More specifically, we may think something and not know why we think it.  We may prefer something, yet not know why we prefer it.  I'm afraid your comment here is related to the "we can't say we don't know, so we have to come up with something" ideology.  It may not be, and that's fine.
But if I am unable to pinpoint the WHY I think something, I should not guess or pull something out of my ass.  Agreed?

The biggest issue that I had with the EV thing--and it's a pattern with you--is not just the guess or pulling something out of your ass. We all do that. It was the seeming level of commitment and confidence you had in a guess you pulled out of your ass. 

And this goes to the first post I wrote in this thread. There's no shame in saying "I don't know" or "I have no opinion on that". There's also no shame in saying "I'm just speculating here, but I think a lot of the slowness with BEV adoption would be solved if we could figure out battery swaps." Then we would have had a nice cordial conversation about the market evolution, the assumptions needed for your speculation to be true, etc. Instead of you saying "well it's going to happen" and starting a debate where I'm throwing facts at you and you're responding with "nah, I just believe it's the future."

Perhaps it's just your communication style, but you typically do the opposite. You present your opinion is the one and only truth, and then dig into your trench when challenged. And that's usually a bad thing when your opinion is a guess or something you pulled out of your ass.