Do you dive with a snorkel!??

[DaleC]

Beano, you say this: "Moreover, lots of old timers ideas have been cast aside, and if it were just the old farts saying "you need to know how to use a snorkel, the is lowering training standards, MacDiver, Damn kids get off my lawn!" then we could safely ignore them as we can with regard to tables, and swim tests, buddy breathing, and the other holdovers from the old days"

...but then you go off on a rant about how unskilled today's modern trained diver is. How exactly has not knowing how to use tables or not demonstrating swimming ability or not knowing how to buddy breath or not know how to use a snorkel made anyone a safer or better diver?

Instead of calling diving pioneers old farts how about trying this: “If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”

 

[beanojones]

..but then you go off on a rant about how unskilled today's modern trained diver is. How exactly has not knowing how to use tables or not demonstrating swimming ability or not knowing how to buddy breath or not know how to use a snorkel made anyone a safer or better diver?
”

This is picking what to hear.

It's not that divers are unskilled. I said the instructors were unskilled in free-diving, and that, and lack of practice makes snorkel use unlikely to be done properly. (Since I don't consider snorkel use a diving skill, it's would not be "divers" who are unskilled.)

It's not that less training is the causative factor in making better divers, it is that equipment advances and changes have made diving safer. It's a tough move to try and align lack of safety with these 'damn kids' new methods; diving is demonstrably safer, despite more divers with a greater range of abilities who do it only a occasionally.

Plus the idea that few could buddy-breath or use the tables a year after taking the course, because few practiced them.

And in the context of this discussion, that's the crucial point. Proper snorkel use is rarely practiced (if ever properly learned). Basic "magic breathing tube" breathing may be practiced, but not proper snorkel breathing.

Instead of calling diving pioneers old farts how about trying this: “If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”

Let's look at what that sentence is about.

First, it presumes diving 'education' is about using the procedures developed by the old hands in the field. But that's not what is happening; the old fart divers are not working on new procedures. The changes made have all been away from previous training methods. They think they already know how it should be done, and they way it is done now is wrong.

Newton, on the other hand (the man that quote refers to) would have approved what Einstein did to his theories of gravity, essentially abandoning them as a rough estimate of what was really happening. In the same way that Newton discarded every previous theory of motion up to his point, when he posited the three laws, and called all the previous thinkers except Copernicus not just slightly, but completely, wrong.

He was giving a sop to all the people he had just called dead wrong. I am not that politic, obviously.

---------- Post Merged at 06:58 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 06:35 PM ----------

Here is a challenge:

For those who insist that a snorkel is an essential piece of safety equipment, I challenge you to find one fatality where the person who died might have been OK if he/she posessed a snorkel.

For those who believe the snorkel to be a hazard, I challenge you to find one fatality (outside of an overhead environment) where the person who died might have been OK if he/she was not wearing a snorkel.

How about one where a snorkel causes discomfort and panic that did not result in anything more because people on hand reacting appropriately and solved the problem?

My example of a diving giant striding off the boat, switching to snorkel, getting hit by a wave, then giving up the snorkel in panic, and choking on a mouthful of water, happens all the time. No snorkel, and the divers may take out their reg, but they hold the reg in their hand ready to go back in if a wave hits. A wave which they can see because their head is oout of the water.

I am not sure you are going to get more detailed on an actual fatality because if no one is there to react, it is not going to be clear what happened afterwards.

 

[agilis]

Yes, let's really look at the what the sentence 'because I stand on the shoulders of giants' is about. It is a simple statement declaring that those who develop successful new methods do so not because they begin from a zero base, but rather because they build on the work done by their predecessors. They may change, modify, expand, and improve the body of knowledge, but they are still totally dependent on the existing body of knowledge as the foundation.

That you don't consider snorkel use a diving skill is meaningless beyond your tiny solipsistic world. It is an empty opinion supported only by the bizarre notion that snorkel use is dangerous because neither students nor instructors know how to use them. An inability to use a snorkel effectively should absolutely disqualify anyone from being an instructor. It's a fatal flaw, the lack of an essential skill.

As a parallel example, instructors may never need to use the tables, but if they don't know how to use them they fail to understand the theoretical framework that all scuba diving relies on, and they cannot be more than a fraud. Unskilled frauds may clumsily and inarticulately dismiss the foundations and the science upon which scuba is based as old fashioned stuff that has been superceded by new methods developed almost independently, but holding that sort of view is, to be as charitable as possible, infantile.

 

[beanojones]

Yes, let's really look at the what the sentence 'because I stand on the shoulders of giants' is about. It is a simple statement declaring that those who develop successful new methods do so not because they begin from a zero base, but rather because they build on the work done by their predecessors. They may change, modify, expand, and improve the body of knowledge, but they are still totally dependent on the existing body of knowledge as the foundation.

Though this thread not about the philosophy and sociology of science, it is about discarding functionless paradigms...

As clear as the above quote might seem, it becomes less clear after the twentieth century's intellectual achievements. In particular, Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is on point.

Newton discarded most of the terms of his contemporaries, redefined the few remaining terms, invented out of whole cloth new terms for entities invented by his theories, posited counterfactual theories which simply flew in the face of observable events, and invented a whole new branch of math to use to talk about his theories. Newton could not have even talked about his ideas with the scientists whose thought he was discarding because even the few common terms were not commensurate. It was not that he was standing not the shoulders of giants; it was more like he was clambering upon their slain bodies.

He made the comment as a sop to the discarded ideas and thinkers. Their usefulness was in showing what not to do, not in guiding what to do (except for Bruno and Copernicus). This is just basing it on Western thinkers, of course, because that comment was a play on what scholastics said, anyway.

As a side note, labeling oneself as a giant, upon whose shoulders present day achievement sits, seems more like a comment of a

mentally ill megalomaniacal

person, than a person who is questioning the status quo because it is functionless, or because it causes problems.

 

[agilis]

Scuba technology is not Theoretical Physics and any attempt to draw metaphors between them will inevitably collapse into absurdity.

I never suggested the metaphorical shoulders were mine. You assume truly megalomaniac levels of hubris by suggesting that you challenge the status quo in even the smallest way.

However much History of Science jargon you attempt to infuse into your rigid constructs, they remain utterly absurd, disjointed trivial bits of nonsense. Only my opinion, of course.

 

[Quero]

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