There have been a number of heated debates spanning over countless threads, in which people have violently argued various points, most of which ultimately boiled down to a disagreement on whether certain dives profiles were similar or not, how much they were similar, or whether X is more similar to Y than to Z. On the basis of the supposed similarity (or lack thereof), people have drawn a variety of conclusions, such as that some profiles are representative (or not) of real diving, that some decompression strategies produce equivalent results, and so on.
I don't recall reading any proposed definition of "similarity" that all the opponents in a discussion would be able to accept. Maybe there was one that I missed, or that I don't remember.
If there is no agreement on what it actually means to be "similar" in a somewhat concrete sense, any discussion on whether things were similar (or representative, or equivalent, or whatever) is unlikely to lead to a constructive outcome: on one hand, a consensus would not be very meaningful, and on the other hand, if the true reasons for the disagreement lie in the different ways, in which people define similarity, it will probably be more productive to elevate the whole discussion, and debate the true source of the apparent disagreement, rather than debating its consequences.
With this said, I have a few specific questions:
1) What is "similarity"? How would you define this concept for a pair of dive profiles, in concrete terms?
2) What does "more similar" mean? If we have dive profiles X, Y, and Z, on what basis could we possibly claim that X is more similar to Y than it is to Z? Could we take that further and say that similarity between dive profiles A and B is greater than similarity between C and D? How would we decide that?
3) What does "similar" mean? On what basis could we possibly attempt to draw a boundary between "similar" and "not similar"? Could we, for example, define a number, such as, to say that similarity of X and Y is 0.58, whatever that might mean, and apply a threshold, beyond which things are to be considered "similar"? If not a number, then on what other basis can we possibly hope to distinguish "similar" from "dissimilar"?
Thanks!
I don't recall reading any proposed definition of "similarity" that all the opponents in a discussion would be able to accept. Maybe there was one that I missed, or that I don't remember.
If there is no agreement on what it actually means to be "similar" in a somewhat concrete sense, any discussion on whether things were similar (or representative, or equivalent, or whatever) is unlikely to lead to a constructive outcome: on one hand, a consensus would not be very meaningful, and on the other hand, if the true reasons for the disagreement lie in the different ways, in which people define similarity, it will probably be more productive to elevate the whole discussion, and debate the true source of the apparent disagreement, rather than debating its consequences.
With this said, I have a few specific questions:
1) What is "similarity"? How would you define this concept for a pair of dive profiles, in concrete terms?
2) What does "more similar" mean? If we have dive profiles X, Y, and Z, on what basis could we possibly claim that X is more similar to Y than it is to Z? Could we take that further and say that similarity between dive profiles A and B is greater than similarity between C and D? How would we decide that?
3) What does "similar" mean? On what basis could we possibly attempt to draw a boundary between "similar" and "not similar"? Could we, for example, define a number, such as, to say that similarity of X and Y is 0.58, whatever that might mean, and apply a threshold, beyond which things are to be considered "similar"? If not a number, then on what other basis can we possibly hope to distinguish "similar" from "dissimilar"?
Thanks!