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Re:Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades by vmception on Saturday April 03, 2021 @04:36PM (#26684503)
Is there a good way to quickly understand this for any topic?

Like, take something you might not be interested in and just "don't get". Your conclusions will be very quick but based on the current state of things.

The people that "do get it" might be crazy, or they might be seeing a longer trend that they've been following so long that they never articulated it, and aren't even capable of articulating it.

How is one supposed to form opinions on new topics where the state rapidly changes?

Re:Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades by philipkglass on Saturday April 03, 2021 @05:03PM (#26684717)
There is no easy shortcut. There are some people who have kept up with academic research, commercial developments, and trend lines over enough time to filter out short term noise. Some of them blog or write long comments on HN. But unless you are one of those people yourself, you won't be able to tell which writers are trustworthy.

You can rapidly filter a lot of noise out of energy news with knowledge of physics and chemistry from 100-level university courses (or equivalent) [1]. But most people never acquired this knowledge and a lot of those who have only retained it long enough to pass tests in school. 10 years later they don't remember the difference between power and energy or why some chemical reactions are exothermic and others endothermic.

[1] This knowledge is actually helpful to filter news in general when it makes assertions about the physical world.