What's with the UTD haters?

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to answer your question about UTD sidemount courses, there are 3 options:
- single tank sidemount using a non-isolatable distribution block (rec)
- double tank sidemount using a non-isolatable distribution block (rec)
- double tank sidemount using Z-isolatable-manifold (tec)
those are the only courses that comply with UTD. people who have a problem with the Z-manifold will also have the same issues with the distribution block.

i totally agree on what you say about the sense of superiority, unfortunately it is there. it is the instructor's job not to convey such attitude.
when i was first introduced to DIR, this was basically what drove me away from it. i didn't want to be part of an elitist group, not even be around those egoistic people. big turn off!!

with complete honesty, and i am not trying to promote UTD here, but i have a personal relationship with the founders of UTD, many of the board members, and a lot of instructors and divers. i never felt this superiority. but anyways, who cares? what matters to me is the divers i teach and the community of divers i am creating. those are the people i am gonna be spending time with. all i care for is for them to have the best education/training, for them to have the right mentality and attitude, and for us to have the most fun together and always get everybody home safe. that about sums it up for me at the end of the day.
 
I've been known to promote UTD ... just as I have its older counterpart GUE ... to students of mine for whom that particular style of diving seems a good fit. Both the UTD and GUE instructors in my area are people I consider friends, and I respect the quality of what they're teaching. Where I raise my eyebrows is when I see someone using the phrase "do it right" in a context that it was used in this thread ... it's a marketing slogan, not a symbol of ultimate competence.

I acknowledge that in each of these organizations there is a specific methodology that they teach ... and specific equipment that fits that methodology. And there are specific reasons why that methodology and equipment are used. I have no issue with the reasoning behind those choices. I do, however, have an issue with people making more of them than they should be, while ignoring the trade-offs ... there are always trade-offs, and a competent instructor doesn't ignore them. Competence comes from looking not only at the what and why of what you teach, but also the why-not ... and challenging the student to make informed decisions based on the merits of the information you provide.

There are merits to standardization ... I think that's self-evident to anyone who spends more than a few seconds thinking about it. But I think there's such a thing as putting too much emphasis on it, and I find the notion that a competent tech diver wouldn't be able to handle minor variations in dive gear to be rather insulting ... we're really not stupid, nor are we computers that need standardized programs in order to talk to each other. Diving, by its nature, is situational ... and a diver who's been trained to accept standards without challenging how they apply to his or her goals and circumstances hasn't been trained to their full potential.

I understand the reasoning behind teaching a course in only one type of equipment ... it makes sense from an instructional level. But classes are an artificial environment, and in the real world every choice you make, whether it's in equipment, methods, or approach to the dive plan, should be prefaced by the word "why". What I see too often are divers who are attempting to fit their equipment choices into the situation rather than the other way around, in an attempt to rationalize why they use the gear they do. That seems a bit "ass-backwards" to me. A diver is "doing it right" when they have solid reasons behind what they do, and solid justifications for the choices they make. My issue with both GUE and UTD is that while they both purport to train "thinking divers", their emphasis on standardization tends to do exactly the opposite, by promoting a thought process that encourages acceptance of an approach without really examining the merits of the rationalization behind it or how it applies to specific circumstances ... and they discourage examining alternative solutions to problems where their standardization isn't really a good fit, with rationalizations why that approach is still the best way to go. To an observer outside the organization, those arguments appear at times to be specious.

This is what produces the elitist and egoistic attitude that some end up with ... just as an acceptance of orthodoxy produces that attitude in so many other human endeavors.

Competence isn't defined by education/training ... it isn't defined by who you trained with, or what equipment choices you made ... it's defined by attitude. The education/training/equipment just provides the tools ... it's up to the diver to decide how to put them to use. The choices you make should be able to stand up to scrutiny ... and you certainly shouldn't feel threatened by anyone challenging those choices, particularly with respect to how they apply to anyone except you. Compatibility doesn't always mean being the same ... if it did, we'd all be married to someone who was exactly like us. A competent diver can go out, have fun, and come home safe diving with people who aren't exactly like them ... if they have compatible attitudes about the goals of the dive and understand each other well enough to know what to do in an emergency. Compatibility isn't about standardization ... it's about predictable behavior ... knowing what to expect from the person you're diving with, and vice versa.

And that is why I take issue with some of the reasoning I read from both UTD and GUE ... there's nothing wrong with their reasoning behind why they do what they do ... it's just not as exclusive as some people make it out to be ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Nope, I don't know you DaleC . . .so how far do you intend on taking innuendo to outright libel, DaleC?

Sorry Kev, I should have clarified that I know you as you portray yourself online at Scubaboard.com; so I don't confuse your statements online at Scubaboard.com for those of an agency.
No innuendo involved. Your comments in this thread speak for themself: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/western-canada/455948-annapolis-us.html If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck... don't complain when people call it a duck.
 
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck... don't complain when people call it a duck.

Well, OK ... but in this case, why insult the ducks?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Bob, that was a splendid post . . . right up to the point where you state that GUE's insistence on standardization defeats the idea of creating a thinking diver, by not encouraging people to develop a rationale for their equipment choices. I know you took your GUE training a LONG time ago, Bob, and I think to some degree things are different. In all the classes I have taken, we go through the equipment and talk about the options one could have (within reason -- I mean, if you went through ALL the options you'd never get to anything else in the class!) and why GUE has chosen the option it has. And sometimes, it's made clear that there wasn't really superiority in one choice, but something had to be chosen to maintain standardization. JJ has been very frank, in public communication, that standardization is one of the core tenets of the system, and although small details are likely unimportant in the majority of lower stress diving, they may very well be important if you are spending 5 hours underground at 300 feet, or penetrating a WWII wreck at 400 feet. I don't know -- I don't do those dives, and I never will.

But my point is that any GUE diver should be able to explain a cogent rationale for the gear setup he is using. And the agency is beginning to accept that not all diving can be done with the core equipment, and although I believe they will always restrict the use of other configurations to their highest level trainees, they ARE doing it.
 
After a quick skim of this thread and trying to ignore the personality/agency clash.

Can you breath safely underwater with your equipment choice?

Can you handle any problems via your personal/agency training?

Answer yes to both questions? Then go diving!


Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk
 
But my point is that any GUE diver should be able to explain a cogent rationale for the gear setup he is using.

Same for any UTD diver! Or any diver, period, for that matter.

I freely admit that I don't know enough about independent sidemount to critique it relative to the Z System. I hope to try it someday, if I can find a good instructor here in SoCal who teaches it. Unfortunately, all the tech instructors I'm aware of down here either stick to GUE and backmount, or use a UTD Z System for sidemount. (Availability of local training is one of the big reasons I chose the Z as my sidemount rig.)

Maybe that's a good excuse for me to make a trip to Florida or the Indo-Pacific?
 
Bob, that was a splendid post . . . right up to the point where you state that GUE's insistence on standardization defeats the idea of creating a thinking diver, by not encouraging people to develop a rationale for their equipment choices. I know you took your GUE training a LONG time ago, Bob, and I think to some degree things are different. In all the classes I have taken, we go through the equipment and talk about the options one could have (within reason -- I mean, if you went through ALL the options you'd never get to anything else in the class!) and why GUE has chosen the option it has. And sometimes, it's made clear that there wasn't really superiority in one choice, but something had to be chosen to maintain standardization. JJ has been very frank, in public communication, that standardization is one of the core tenets of the system, and although small details are likely unimportant in the majority of lower stress diving, they may very well be important if you are spending 5 hours underground at 300 feet, or penetrating a WWII wreck at 400 feet. I don't know -- I don't do those dives, and I never will.

But my point is that any GUE diver should be able to explain a cogent rationale for the gear setup he is using. And the agency is beginning to accept that not all diving can be done with the core equipment, and although I believe they will always restrict the use of other configurations to their highest level trainees, they ARE doing it.

... but it also produces those who can only repeat what their instructor told them, without really understanding the "why" behind it. We see those conversations taking place in here regularly, and while they are not representative of the intent of the agency, they are a product of them.

You can't really be a thinking diver and be dismissive, out of hand, of alternative approaches to problem-solving. That your solution works doesn't mean other solutions don't.

Throughout this entire conversation, for example, those who are promoting the merits of the Z-system dismiss ... without really considering the merits of the argument ... those who have attempted to explain the weaknesses.

GUE isn't really any different ... there are those like yourself who examine alternative approaches, even if you ultimately decide it's not for you ... and there are those who simply deride those approaches as somehow inferior. Both are a product of the same training ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Throughout this entire conversation, for example, those who are promoting the merits of the Z-system dismiss ... without really considering the merits of the argument ... those who have attempted to explain the weaknesses.

Not all of us! I appreciate the rational critiques that have been made of the Z manifold, and I look forward to being able to try independent SM in the future so I can have a solid basis for comparison.

Related to this, I'm curious how many critics of the Z manifold have actually tried diving one? Experienced the ease of donning your tanks in the water without having to route hoses and plug BC and drysuit inflators? Tried single-tank rec sidemount with the Z? Tried surface supplied Zuba? (For the record, I hate that name.)

I feel like I dive the Z manifold with my eyes open to its shortcomings. That's been one of the great benefits of the dialogue we've been having, when it's been civil.

For me personally, the way I dive at the moment (mostly recreational), the pluses outweigh the minuses. In the future, who knows?
 
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