[Genesis]

In an attempt to take this part of the Open Source discussion where it belongs, I am going to try to put the training-related part of it here, by quoting the appropriate pieces and responding - hopefully it will move HERE rather than THERE...

Here's the trackback to the original:
http://www.rebreatherworld.com/open-...html#post82338

And without further ado, here it is:

Quote:

I sit here and read this rant against mandatory training and wonder...
If there were no mandatory training, how many would elect for self training?
and...how many would die on the first dive?

Few and fewer.

How about you be honest about this Ron? MANY people perform dives with zero formal training. I know many of them and have dove with more than a few. They're all still alive.

You can buy literally everything you need to go diving off eBAY or internet retailers (Leisurepro, etc) - including a compressor.

Many dive shops don't actually ask for cards to get a fill.

TDL sells doubles without proof of a technical certification. Virtually any shop will sell you a deco bottle without seeing a deco card.

There are hundreds of cave dives made every weekend at Vortex alone by open water divers. The gate is at 300' and 110' down. You cannot make a free ascent from there. No way no how. ALL of those OW divers come in there with a single and most with a $10 flashlight. Have some people died? Yes, a few. In comparsion to the number of successful dives has it been a big number? No.

This is simply not rare and yet the "body count" isn't what's always predicted. It just isn't!

Quote:

It is a proven fact that humans are not competent judges of their own skill levels, the statistics show that 80% of drivers rate themselves as better than most...hmmm.

So that means you're not a good judge of your ability as an instructor either! Hmmmm....

Quote:

As a rebreather instructor, I want folks to leave my course with full understanding of: the unit, the risks, the skills, and the knowledge of what they are doing. Nothing makes me more satisfied than a student thanking me for saving them hours of "discovery learning" which may be great for math skills (the NEW math), but sucks for life support equipment. "Whoops, that didn't work..." There is no feedback on skills practice from a written manual. Period. You cannot learn to dive from a book. Period. An unbiased examiner can correct poor habits and skills before they become ingrained, or life-threateningly poor. A manual cannot require you to take along a bailout cylinder.

No instructor can force you to take along a bailout cylinder either. You can't learn to dive from a book but you sure as hell can with progressive practice, which is how we do it now!

Start in a pool - after you start on the COUCH!

Quote:

In the early days of scuba history, there were frequent deaths, and the industry incorporated mandatory training, thereby saving many lives and the industry from gov intervention, sure some agencies see this as a license to rape and pillage (boat diving course??? give me a break) but not all.

Bald assertion not supported by the evidence.

Indeed, I've heard this before. I have challenged people to present the proof of that claim (that the government was ready to step in) with a proposed bill, a DRAFT (well before the level of a proposed anything), or any other documentation for their claims. They have so far been unable to do so.

Have we saved lives? I'm not so sure!

And in any event, that's not the point.

If you could cut the death rate in half, would you mandate that we do so?

Be careful with answering this, because I can cut the death rate in the United States in half tomorrow. All I have to do is ban you from overeating under penalty of law, ban smoking and ban all consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs.

Oh wait - we already try doing some of that and it doesn't work so well, does it? Hmmmm.....

But if you look at things you could make mandatory (or illegal) in terms of number of people who get cacked for the proposal made, diving is way down the list of where you should apply your efforts. Obesity, smoking and alcohol are so far out in front of everything else that until you're ready to pass the laws to make those illegal you're barking up a tree.

Let's look at the reality here - the US Supreme Court has declared that it is your constitutional right to engage in a consensual adult practice that has a FIFTY PERCENT death rate. FIFTY PERCENT! And that death rate isn't conjecture as is YOUR warning of dire consequences - its a documented FACT according to the CDC.

So where do you get off trying to give force of law (and you would if you could, wouldn't you?) to what you believe?

You want to know what I think has made the biggest difference in terms of caves? Signage. The "grim reaper" signs are bullship in that they're fundamentally dishonest and intended to scare rather than inform, but they appear to work for the most part.

Funny thing is that when you look at the statistics we still get people who cack themselves cave diving - they just have cards now, where they didn't before. Have we really fixed anything?

Quote:

Only a VERY small persentage of persons alive on this planet can be trusted to manage their own CCR instruction. The only reason to push an agenda of no mandantory instruction is a homicidal wish for others on this planet and a massive black eye for the CCR industry. If you wish to self train...by all means, build your own...buy your own boat, and go diving. No one is stopping you. Actively Pushing these views on the rest of the world is only going to cause widespread injury and death and the world wide governmental regulation of our sport, or banning altogether. If you dont understand that, then I humbly submit that you are not in possesion of all of your marbles, or you live in an ivory tower where everyone around you is of equal intelligence and you cannot see past your windows at the masses. Its great to have a political view of freedom that is cast in concrete, its entirely another thing to completely screw my (and thousands of others) favorite sport, because you have a political agenda.

Accusing someone of being a homicidal maniac, insane or worse is akin to my accusing you of molesting young boys. I'm sure you don't want to go there, right?

Never mind that such an allegation constitutes an admission that you don't have an answer to the philosophical point on the table and thus must try to sway others with emotional - rather than factual - appeals.

Pushing for freedom is not pushing someone to do a thing. It is advocating for the absence of force. You, on the other hand, advocate for the imposition of force.

You're quite intelligent so I'm very sure you know this, and thus you know that trying to claim otherwise is not an honest appraisal.

Do you hold the view that if you believe a cause is just then its ok to lie?

Quote:

The folks who care about this industry, and even more, care about the people who want to buy their products, will always require training, WHY? Because they dont want people dying on their equipment, not just for the bad press, but because they GENUINELY dont want people to die or be injured and they understand human nature, such as it is.

Then take responsibility for your instruction. You, the agency(s) you instruct for, the firm(s) that build the units you teach on and the shops you work for all refuse.

Indeed, that's where the rubber meets the road.

You don't believe your own bullship!

I'm philosophically and ethically consistent. You are not.

Quote:

I personally know mulitple owners of companies that manufacture dive equipment and have spoken with them about specific deaths on units their company built. This is a weight that they all carry, heavily upon their shoulders. I have trained people on rebreathers and I frequently consider how I would feel if any of them perished while diving equipment I have trained them on. This motivates me to be a better instructor. Why would you want to increase that weight by legaling preventing mandantory instruction? Because that would be the result, regardless of your arguments.

Proof please.

Oh wait - you don't have any. And what's worse, you don't believe your own prescription actually works!

Never mind that your approach has resulted from collusive actions that are suspect under US Law at best and has come along with a blunt refusal to accept legal responsibility for what you teach.

The unit-specific class is just one of many examples. It is utterly indefensible. Not even PADI, who is with good cause known as "Put Another Dollar In", pulls this crap. They don't try to claim that you need anything beyond an OW card to dive with doubles, for example - yet that's a HUGE change from a single on a poodle jacket and, mishandled, it can kill you!

Quote:

I do understand your point of view, however, if adopted for the masses, people will die needlessly. For the select few to pay for courses they really dont need, is a small price to pay to keep the rest alive. And, as always, there are avenues you can follow to avoid paying the piper, buy second hand, build your own, dive from the shore etc. If you dont think you can learn anything from a instructor led course, I think you are deceiving yourself.

"Its a small price to pay." To you, of course - you're not paying - you're collecting.

Second, you still won't accept responsibility for the quality of your class. You still insist that I sign a waiver that says that I won't sue you even if you are actually negligent and teach me bullship, and that is the proximate result of my death!

So let me see if I got this right:

1. You claim that I don't know enough to dive the unit without your class, and if I try to, I will die. This is your justification for forcing me to take it.

2. However, you don't believe your class is actually correct and complete - that is, it contains the information I need to avoid dying. Nor do are you REALLY sure that I actually mastered it when you gave me the card. How do I know this? Because before you'll teach the class you force me to sign a paper that says exactly this!

But - remember point #1? You claim that I am incapable of judging whether or not you're F.O.S. So you want me to trust you, but you just got done shoving a waiver under my nose that says that I can't trust you!

If you don't think this is a problem then you're the one who needs help.

More importantly though is the philosophical problem with this position. "But for banning this or requiring that, we could cut the number of deaths by X." I've already pointed out that diving is so far down the list as to not count.

But that's not the point.

The singular point here is this - is self-determination a right you respect or not?

There's nothing complex in this analysis.

Quote:

Remember, before you go off on me, I have been on both sides of the fence, I am self taught on CCR as well as trimix, but then went and took the courses on both and yes, I learned something during every course and whether or not it keeps me alive, my training has been worth every penny.
What, really, is your agenda? widespread death? or politics? Are peoples lives important to you? if not, then rant on!
__________________
Ron
RBW FIGJAM commitee member

My life is quite important to me.

But it is not my place to judge whether anyone else's life is important to them, nor is it my place to tell them that they're too stupid to judge whether what I might teach them is correct or not - yet I won't take responsibility for WHAT I TEACH!

IF I was to ever teach someone something that I assert they must learn in order to avoid dying, I would not display my hypocrisy so blatantly by immediately shoving a waiver under their nose that states that if my instruction is deficient or outright WRONG that they're just SOL when they die anyway!

I believe in strong advocacy of instruction. I believe that manufacturers should have the sort of posture that Jetsam used to have before the agencies took an approach that I argue was unlawful (a forced tied sale in order to make any sales at all!), which was quite simply that "you're insane to teach yourself how to use this and the only warranty this device has is that it is absolutely capable of killing you without warning."

Funny how during that time not ONE SINGLE PERSON perished on his unit. NOT ONE. And yet there were (according to his web site) well north of 100 units in the field.

Not one death Ron.

Yet there was no forced instruction.

How come nobody got killed? Take your assertion and place it next to the FACTS and it becomes clear that what you assert has absolutely no basis in reality as all of the existing evidence points the other way!

I think what this has exposed is the raw hypocrisy of your perspective - "I'll teach you but I actively refuse to be responsible for what I teach, and I'll force you to take the class too if I can find a way."

I assert that your position is not about safety.

Its about money and power.

And beyond that, it sets a dangerous precedent that could cause the very damage to the industry you claim to want to avoid. Failing to actually prevent deaths when you claim you can is likely to lead to ever-tighter restrictions, and those will come from the government.

There is only one sane position - and that is to instead take the stance that personal liberty and autonomy requires that both the government and industry butt out of what is inherently a personal risk and therefore personal choice.

Issue strong advice for instruction - yell, holler, scream, and push 100 page waivers under people's noses that have to be notarized or even have a lawyer sign off that he explained what it means to you before you signed it.

But - in the end analysis - if despite all the cajoling and warning someone chooses to dive - in any place and with any gear - without "advised" formal levels of instruction, if you respect individual rights and personal autonomy you are required to leave them alone.

[decoweenie]

Ron,

Normally I would feel sorry for you, but I don't in this case as you brought it onto yourself - like a moth to a flame...

Popcorn and a coke, please!

(settling in for the show, ahhhhh...)

[divetheworld]

First prize to the first one to read it all.

[decoweenie]

Quote: (Originally Posted by divetheworld)

First prize to the first one to read it all.

Consolation prize for scolling my mouse from top to bottom ?

I would pay to see Karl takes on both sides alternatively, and argue against himself...

[dgschott]

I sort of feel a deja vu coming on..... Didn't we go through all this on my thread? We really need to find something new to fight about ;-)

[trob09]

Quote: (Originally Posted by decoweenie)

I would pay to see Karl takes on both sides alternatively, and argue against himself...

Oh god no.

20,000-word posts with dozens of quote-by-quote counter-arguments, pointless side-discussions, inaccurate analogies.

No, Please, no.

[trob09]

Quote: (Originally Posted by dgschott)

I sort of feel a deja vu coming on..... Didn't we go through all this on my thread? We really need to find something new to fight about ;-)

Yes. Maybe we can make that thread auto forward to this one and this one auto forward to that one. Anyone who goes to either will be trapped & we can move on.

[PacketSniffer]

Quote: (Originally Posted by dgschott)

We really need to find something new to fight about ;-)

We could argue why we should get the manufacturers to adopt this new technology so we could have better rebreathers and save some lives.

[Joe]

Remnicent of Saturday night live with Jane Curtin and Dan Akryoid.....Jane you miserable ****.....shut up....

Quote: (Originally Posted by trob09)

Yes. Maybe we can make that thread auto forward to this one and this one auto forward to that one. Anyone who goes to either will be trapped & we can move on.

[Mixaddict]

Is it possible to institue a ban on all posts over 10,000 words full of mindless dribble?