I disagree. I do not believe Certification/fomral training is the only path as I have stated a couple of times already in this thread. However informal training needs to be completed, knowledge learnt, and skills practiced in safe enviroments, then a a gradual increase in the difficultly of the dives completed.
I have no idea what you are disagreeing with--I said pretty clearly that it is possible to get training outside of formal certification, at least in theory. I also said clearly that if you do get such training, then it is indeed training.
My point was that there are people claiming that the training is not necessary. Read through the thread and you will see them. The impetus for this thread was another thread in which the OP claimed that as an AOW diver with no training beyond that, he could do a specific cave dive that he described, and he was unimpressed by people who told him how dangerous it was. He was unimpressed by the fact that another similar diver tried the exact same dive less than a year before and died doing it. It is the people like that who really scare us.
The girl who was rescued this summer in Twin Cave certainly did not think she needed the training, and I bet she as really glad when an instructor found her in zero visibility.
Now, what about that informal training that you can in theory get?
I am an experienced recreational instructor and a tech instructor. I am fully cave certified. I am certified to teach the PADI cavern diving course.
I would never, ever attempt to teach cave diving beyond that level without proper certification myself, and if you were to take cavern diving from me, you would learn that the primary focus of my training would be to make you aware of why more training is needed if you want to go beyond that. I would be
very suspicious of any cave diver who offered to give you cave training outside of a formal certification program. (I am not talking about people mentoring you at your level after you have certification.) If you decide to get such informal training, remember that if your untrained instructor kills you, your family may have trouble getting anything from his estate--he will not have been insured for that instruction.
But you can learn it all from books, can't you? You will only think that is true if you have not been in a cave course and had a qualified instructor throw problems at you for which your book learning (which you already have had) is doing no good whatsoever.