Dangerous psychology- Diving beyond one's training

[BDSC]

No problem!

 

[fjpatrum]

This here is exactly why more training is needed. You simply don't know what you don't know. What these divers did is extremely dangerous. One small mistake, and we'd be reading about when their funeral was being planned. Sure, they read somewhere about deco gas and used it. What if a reg had free flowed at 200 ft? You can't just go up to the surface, and nobody had enough air in a single air tank to save someone else. Lucky they got themselves back. There was no planning for emergencies. No planning for safety deco stops. Nothing like that. Had they had training, they would know about the additional risks and dangers, and how to prepare for it. Instead, they made a dive they knew little about, and got lucky and now think they are bullet proof underwater and some poor sap is going to have to go retrieve their bodies someday. I hope not, but it's reality.

There are some classes that are silly to have and are nothing but money drains. I get that. But there are some things you just shouldn't play with. In this sport, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is not a good excuse. Ignorance will get you killed. I believe a lot of people who do it say to themselves, "Just this once. I'll be ok if I just do it this one time." And of course it's never just that one time, and it's still a bad idea, but it makes it sound ok to yourself. Also there's the, "My buddy has enough experience. I'm safe." Otherwise known as "trust me" dives. Also a bad idea, but it is deceptive and easy to make you feel safe. Those are the biggest reasons I think people do it.

I call bull**** on the "you don't know what you don't know" statement. I'm so sick of hearing that. Research is research, whether it's done with a "qualified person" next to you or not. Yes it's possible to be ignorant of a subject and make careless mistakes. It's also entirely possible to have done all the research necessary to plan such a stunt (in my mind that's all a dive like that can be called) without ever having anyone else's direct input. Is it stupid? I don't judge, I just don't to it.

Making an informed decision really isn't all that difficult. It's not like someone fresh out of OW just dropped to 200 feet without considering it. Hence my original comment. It's trivially easy to research on here and in books what is necessary to plan a dive of that type and consider whether or not it is a choice you want to make.

Yes, people do stupid things. Yes people are overconfident. Yes, some of us do things we don't understand. Don't assume just because someone hasn't done it before, though, that they don't know what to do and how to do it.

 

[tstormdiver]

I call bull**** on the "you don't know what you don't know" statement. I'm so sick of hearing that. Research is research, whether it's done with a "qualified person" next to you or not. Yes it's possible to be ignorant of a subject and make careless mistakes. It's also entirely possible to have done all the research necessary to plan such a stunt (in my mind that's all a dive like that can be called) without ever having anyone else's direct input. Is it stupid? I don't judge, I just don't to it.

Making an informed decision really isn't all that difficult. It's not like someone fresh out of OW just dropped to 200 feet without considering it. Hence my original comment. It's trivially easy to research on here and in books what is necessary to plan a dive of that type and consider whether or not it is a choice you want to make.

Yes, people do stupid things. Yes people are overconfident. Yes, some of us do things we don't understand. Don't assume just because someone hasn't done it before, though, that they don't know what to do and how to do it.

Wrong! You don't know what you don't know- Sorry it's fact, whether you're tired of hearing it or not.

Proof: When I made the untrained dive into vortex springs, I did not know that I would suffer narcosis as I did at the grate, I did not know that the passages are look totally different from the other direction. I did not know that on a dark night that the walls of the depression in front of the cave looked like the walls of the cave. I did not know that the black sky above looked like the ceiling of the cave. I was in open water & never knew it for many minutes. I never knew there were so many dangers, problems, issues that could arise from going into a cave untrained. Thank goodness I figured it out before running out of air (but barely before). Until I got properly trained to dive the caves, I did not know that there was so much to it that I was unaware of (aka I didn't know what I didn't know). If I had known all those dangers, at that point, there is no way in hell I would have gone into that cave. I broke 3 of the 5 rules of safe cave diving & I was incredibly lucky I survived what I did not know.

As far as the group that did the 200 ft bounce dive, the one diver I talked to didn't know what going that deep does to the body's physiology. He didn't know what could go wrong, he didn't know that he needed redundancy, he didn't know that 32% at 40 ft for deco was pretty useless. aka... He didn't know what he didn't know.

So,... now your call on Solitari is completely debunked.

 

[redacted]

If "you don't know what you don't know" were a good and sufficient reason not to do something, there would be lots of things we do every day that we would not do. Do you know what will happen on your way to work on Monday?

 

[DaleC]

The problem with the statement "you don't know what you don't know" is not that there isn't a grain of truth in it. It's that it is often used to discredit some others viewpoint because it does not agree with your own. It's dismissive when used in these types of discussions because the user doesn't really know what the intended target knows or doesn't know either - so they shouldn't actually comment because "they don't know what they don't know" about that other person.

It's just an attempt to disqualify a POV by using a generic blanket statement.

 

[fjpatrum]

Wrong! You don't know what you don't know- Sorry it's fact, whether you're tired of hearing it or not.

Proof: When I made the untrained dive into vortex springs, I did not know that I would suffer narcosis as I did at the grate, I did not know that the passages are look totally different from the other direction. I did not know that on a dark night that the walls of the depression in front of the cave looked like the walls of the cave. I did not know that the black sky above looked like the ceiling of the cave. I was in open water & never knew it for many minutes. I never knew there were so many dangers, problems, issues that could arise from going into a cave untrained. Thank goodness I figured it out before running out of air (but barely before). Until I got properly trained to dive the caves, I did not know that there was so much to it that I was unaware of (aka I didn't know what I didn't know). If I had known all those dangers, at that point, there is no way in hell I would have gone into that cave. I broke 3 of the 5 rules of safe cave diving & I was incredibly lucky I survived what I did not know.

As far as the group that did the 200 ft bounce dive, the one diver I talked to didn't know what going that deep does to the body's physiology. He didn't know what could go wrong, he didn't know that he needed redundancy, he didn't know that 32% at 40 ft for deco was pretty useless. aka... He didn't know what he didn't know.

So,... now your call on Solitari is completely debunked.

Please read again. It's trivially easy to come on here and do research. Similarly, there are books in just about any library about diving. Technical diving books are harder to find but, again, not really difficult if you bother using google for 30 seconds. My point is that what all of you who say that are really saying is "you don't know what I know", which isn't the same thing. And, especially without diving with someone, you don't know jack about what someone does or does not know.

To put it plainly, the things you didn't know at Vortex springs I learned here on Scubaboard in about 2 days worth of reading a week after I finished OW. I wouldn't have known, perhaps, at what point I might actually get narc'd but I would have known that people do and I should be aware of the possibility.


More importantly, it doesn't really matter what you know if you're being careless, which is really what this thread was about in the first place.

I'll get off my soapbox now. Clearly we have different methodologies for learning but both agree that some things shouldn't be done without actually educating yourself first.

 

[AaronRiot]

The problem with the statement "you don't know what you don't know" is not that there isn't a grain of truth in it. It's that it is often used to discredit some others viewpoint because it does not agree with your own. It's dismissive when used in these types of discussions because the user doesn't really know what the intended target knows or doesn't know either - so they shouldn't actually comment because "they don't know what they don't know" about that other person.

It's just an attempt to disqualify a POV by using a generic blanket statement.

Well put.

 

[SWAMPY459]

I call bull**** on the "you don't know what you don't know" statement. I'm so sick of hearing that. Research is research, whether it's done with a "qualified person" next to you or not. Yes it's possible to be ignorant of a subject and make careless mistakes. It's also entirely possible to have done all the research necessary to plan such a stunt (in my mind that's all a dive like that can be called) without ever having anyone else's direct input. Is it stupid? I don't judge, I just don't to it.

Making an informed decision really isn't all that difficult. It's not like someone fresh out of OW just dropped to 200 feet without considering it. Hence my original comment. It's trivially easy to research on here and in books what is necessary to plan a dive of that type and consider whether or not it is a choice you want to make.

Yes, people do stupid things. Yes people are overconfident. Yes, some of us do things we don't understand. Don't assume just because someone hasn't done it before, though, that they don't know what to do and how to do it.

Exactly.

Awesome response.

 

[Mustard Dave]

Out of interest, what cert cards did Jacques Cousteau have?

 

[captain]

Out of interest, what cert cards did Jacques Cousteau have?

And he dived to a ripe old age and didn't die diving. Jacques was my instructor, not literally, but I read every last word he wrote and proceeded to teach myself to dive at age 13 55 years ago. In those 55 years I have done most types of dives except caves. Along the way I did get a YMCA scuba diver cert in 1970, there were only two types of certifications at the time, scuba diver and instructor.