Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire III

[Wudang]

In England, Jeremy Clarkson is revered as an auto expert - he presented a long running television car show called 'Top Gear' - yet he left school (albeit an expensive one) with just one O-level and expelled.

No he's revered by some and regarded by others as a gobby opinionated idiot[. Again popularity is not expertise.

How do you reconcile that with your snobbish claim that John Cadogan "has "a degree" in Mechanical Engineering. My guess is that it's an undergraduate degree"...? Whilst academia is admirable, it's not the be-all and end-all. In my last employment but one, one of the partners was earning £2m a year having left school at fifteen. He was fortunate to have gone into the profession when paper qualifications were not compulsory. I know plenty of well-educated academic types who failed professional exam after professional exam. So your criteria seems to be based on pure snobbery.

Try reading posts before you respond to them. The point is that having a degree in a subject does not make you an expert in practical application in related fields. Ironically your post makes almost the same point.

 

[JayUtah]

So your anecdata, where n = 1, settles it and applies to everybody?

It applies to you and your source, and it conforms with my experience.

 

[Vixen]

I have a 10-yard certificate in swimming. Yet I do not consider myself an auto expert.

 

[JayUtah]

I have a 10-yard certificate in swimming. Yet I do not consider myself an auto expert.

Cute.

Can you give any better reasons why the person you're trying to qualify as an expert in automotive lithium ion battery fires should be afforded that status?

 

[jimbob]

So your anecdata, where n = 1, settles it and applies to everybody?

I guess you didn't spot the general point. Which is that something as generic as a degree in mechanical engineering is no substitute for actual expertise in a technical subject.

Someone who routinely gets basic facts wrong and who demonstrates a less than average grasp of general topics is really going to struggle with highly technical subjects if they refuse to learn from those who do actually know about them.

 

[Vixen]

Cute.

Can you give any better reasons why the person you're trying to qualify as an expert in automotive lithium ion battery fires should be afforded that status?

The testimonials to John Cadogan speak for themselves:


@Highfiber123
5 months ago
As a scientist that has conducted fire analyses for government agencies, I wanted to say that this was a very technically accurate account. Good study, thanks for posting

@davedorney700
6 months ago
I work in a fire testing facility everything he is saying is legit, very good advice

https://youtu.be/zk0MWDsueMY?si=i_--EzO-o6VDqpf2

 

[MarkCorrigan]

And the evidence those people are telling the truth is...?

 

[SpitfireIX]

Further, you do realize that YouTubers can delete comments, don't you? So we have no idea how many people might have posted "No, you're wrong, and here's why . . ." and had it deleted.

 

[Foster Zygote]

In the other image, which is a four second video, you can see the slat of the low roof, so the footage appears to be from someone tall enough to get all of that in, albeit from a safe distance - and the ceiling is low, anyway - and it may well be cropped. So you can tell the perspective by eye that the ground is much flatter than in the first picture.

This is exactly the sort of complete nonsense we're on about.

Perspective can tell us some information about the relationship between the floor and the ceiling relative to each other, but it doesn't tell us **** about their combined relationship to true level. Going back to my hallway example, you're basically saying the hallway in the photo is clearly sloping down away from the camera, relative to true level, because the center of the image is above the vanishing point, and when asked what reference you're using to determine that the camera lens is parallel to true level, you say, "well the vanishing point of the ceiling is below the center of the image, too, and the focus appears to be nice and sharp".

The only unknown at this point is whether you're genuinely unable to grasp the concept being presented, or you're simply pathologically incapable of admitting that you don't already know everything.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Further, you do realize that YouTubers can delete comments, don't you? So we have no idea how many people might have posted "No, you're wrong, and here's why . . ." and had it deleted.

In fact there are numerous conspiracy theorists on YouTube who are notorious for deleting any comment that disagrees with their nonsense. It's almost as though conspiracy theorists have insecurity issues.

 

[JayUtah]

The only unknown at this point is whether you're genuinely unable to grasp the concept being presented, or you're simply pathologically incapable of admitting that you don't already know everything.

It could very well be the former. Everyone is blessed with a certain amount of spatial reasoning ability. Nevertheless a wide spectrum exists. Some people are simply incapable of the spatial reasoning required to understand the problems of photographic rectification. I was surprised early in my career at how many people could not visualize a mechanical assembly by looking at canonical drawings of it. I had just assumed everyone could do that.

 

[phiwum]

What on earth do you mean by this?

I mean that immediately after the report, it will be a few days before you post here. I could be wrong. I'm not particularly confident of that part of my prediction.

I am absolutely confident that the report will explicitly say that Car Zero is a diesel ICE vehicle and that you will find reason to doubt this claim.

I appreciate facts. If the report is factual and detailed, as I am sure it will be, why would I be dissatisfied? The only problem I can foresee is government interference in facts it does not want the public to know. For example, the Russia Report, the Bullying Report (re a former minister) and of course, it has been decreed there will be no investigation into billions of recent missing taxpayer monies.

Let's see if there is any critical analysis of the presumed JLR vehicle involved.

Well, we'll see what happens when the report is released. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.

 

[JayUtah]

The testimonials to John Cadogan speak for themselves:

Anders Björkman had testimonials too.

@Highfiber123

I see evidence that he's a guitarist, but nothing that validates his claim to be a scientist experienced with "fire analysis" (a suspiciously vague term).

@davedorney700

Doesn't say what he does at the fire testing facility, and his account gives you no information to support the claim that he's an expert in fire analysis.

What did you do to verify that these endorsements had any actual technical evidentiary value?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Haynes repair manuals are usually helpful. I learned separately how to work on cars, via working with knowledgeable people, following Haynes, and lots of other hands-on experience. One thing we actually tell people as teachers of engineering is, "Don't work on your own car." That's because you'll really screw things up going in with a head full of theory and no street smarts. The factory/manufacturer repair manuals are de rigueur, or the third-party ones like Haynes (most times).

"I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering" is not tantamount to, "I know the gory details of how cars—or some specific car—works.

Indeed. My wife's cousin is an ASE Master Mechanic with certifications from Volvo, Toyota and Ford. He's really good at it. One time he got his neighbor's Ford Explorer to start with a hammer tap to the inside floor. She was like, "you're kidding me! You Fnonzied my car?". He explained that the fuel pump had seized up and that the hammer blow had simply freed it, and recommended she get the fuel pump replaced because it would happen again. He also had a couple of modifications added to Volvo service procedures based on things he'd learned, which is sort of the professional mechanic version of having a paper published in a mainstream journal. That's what I think of when I hear the word "expert" regarding cars (or my uncle Bob, who was an engineer at General Motors main design facility). But even he, I'm sure, would not pretend to be an expert in the way fires propagate through various types of cars and trucks. Vixen's standard for determining expertise regarding anything automotive seems to be whether he/she knows what all the buttons and knobs do.

 

[JayUtah]

Vixen's standard for determining expertise regarding anything automotive seems to be whether he/she knows what all the buttons and knobs do.

Here she seems to think scientific or evidentiary credibility begins and ends with comments sections in social media experiences. That's a very "conspiracy theorist" thing to do.

 

[Foster Zygote]

It could very well be the former. Everyone is blessed with a certain amount of spatial reasoning ability. Nevertheless a wide spectrum exists. Some people are simply incapable of the spatial reasoning required to understand the problems of photographic rectification. I was surprised early in my career at how many people could not visualize a mechanical assembly by looking at canonical drawings of it. I had just assumed everyone could do that.

I've come to strongly suspect that most flat earthers have exceptionally poor spatial modeling. I'm not saying that poor spatial reasoning = flat earther, but it definitely seems to be a component of that cosmology.

I've even had the displeasure of riding with drivers who seem to have considerable difficulty assessing distances to and velocities of other cars.

 

[phiwum]

In England, Jeremy Clarkson is revered as an auto expert - he presented a long running television car show called 'Top Gear' - yet he left school (albeit an expensive one) with just one O-level and expelled.

How do you reconcile that with your snobbish claim that John Cadogan "has "a degree" in Mechanical Engineering. My guess is that it's an undergraduate degree"...? Whilst academia is admirable, it's not the be-all and end-all. In my last employment but one, one of the partners was earning £2m a year having left school at fifteen. He was fortunate to have gone into the profession when paper qualifications were not compulsory. I know plenty of well-educated academic types who failed professional exam after professional exam. So your criteria seems to be based on pure snobbery.

I mention his degree precisely because he mentions it himself.

Without the degree, what do we have? He has had, he says, a long career in journalism focusing on vehicles. I don't know whether he has a good reputation in those circles or whether anyone regards him as an expert because of his experience there. We also know he puts out videos on Youtube, but I'm not sure I regard Youtube audiences as reliable judges of automotive expertise.

So, you tell me: On what grounds do you judge him an Auto Expert? Is it merely because he calls himself one?

More to the point, why do you regard him as an expert in judging whether a particular car fire was caused by a lithium ion battery?

 

[phiwum]

The testimonials to John Cadogan speak for themselves:


@Highfiber123
5 months ago
As a scientist that has conducted fire analyses for government agencies, I wanted to say that this was a very technically accurate account. Good study, thanks for posting

@davedorney700
6 months ago
I work in a fire testing facility everything he is saying is legit, very good advice

https://youtu.be/zk0MWDsueMY?si=i_--EzO-o6VDqpf2

Well, if you can't trust Youtube comments about the expertise of Youtube content providers, who the heck can you trust?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

In England, Jeremy Clarkson is revered as an auto expert ...

You chose a remarkably bad example. He likes driving cars and writing about them.

He knows bugger all about the engineering that goes into them and indeed the show regularly leaned in to make jokes about how clueless and ham-fisted he was when faced with the simplest servicing jobs.

 

[Vixen]

Further, you do realize that YouTubers can delete comments, don't you? So we have no idea how many people might have posted "No, you're wrong, and here's why . . ." and had it deleted.

Of course I am aware of such biases. It is possible to read media without being sucked in.