Ken Kurtis
Contributor
Ken, I know you said your post was not a slam on me. But it was a pretty intense and angry rant in which you dissected my entire post...and I do feel slammed.
Sorry to hear that. My apologies. But as I tried to make clear, my comments were not a personal slam at you. And FWIW, I'm not at all "angry". Really & truly. Re-read my post, even out loud, do it in a calm tone of voice and see if it feels different.
Well, at the very least I feel my opinion was slammed, and pretty hard.
Bingo!!! Yes, agreed. And that was the point of my "this is not a slam at you" comment. I disgaree STRONGLY with some of the opinions you stated. I stated my disagreement strongly. I'm happy to be challenged on any of the opinions I expressed. But that doesn't mean I think badly of you. In my mind, different things.
That all being said, there was really only one comment I wanted to address here:
I disagree that speculative discussions are irresponsible.
There's no question they can be useful. But it's irresponsible (IMHO) to present specualtion as fact. And that is done with an alarming frequency in these types of threads.
I have no problem with people speculating (despite the exact words I posted that said "can we end the speculation"). But label it as such. It's when people take their speculation, post it as if it's fact (because they weant to appear that they "know" something), and then subsequent dicsussions are based on this "fact", THAT'S when I think things get out of hand.
This would be an example of what I'm talking about:
(SPECULATION CLEARLY LABELLED) "Is it possible that they had a heart attack underwater? Could they have felt it coming on? And if so, could that cause them to bolt?"
(SPECULATION PRESENTED AS FACT) "They had a heart attack and felt it coming on which caused them to bolt to the surface."
In my mind, there's a big difference there. So I DON'T mean "Don't ever speculate" (even though I phrased it that way - could have done a better job there), I'm simply saying that IF you want to explore various options/scenarios, clearly label their speculative nature.
We do this all the time when we're doing the actual investigation. There are usually a set of known/undisputed facts, and we try to see what scenarios would fit to have caused the events to play out as they did.
In this particular case, we know from the instructor's statements that the diver bolted. The real question is WHY did they bolt. So among the theories we'll want to look at would be:
1. Out of air (not supported by the evidence)
2. Reg won't deliver air (equipment tests pending - no anecdotal support)
3. Over-breathing reg (hard to determine without air-integrated computer)
4. Shallow hyperventilation, CO2 buildup (no medical test for it - anecdotal only)
5. Leaky reg (equipment tests pending)
6. Mask problems (can't clear and panicked)
7. Cardiac problems (which are harder than you might think to pinpoint as the actual cause)
8. General anxiety/panic attack
9. Loss of negative buoyancy (weights came off - not supported by the evidence)
10. Spooked by aquatic life (not supported by anecdotal)
11. Other underlying medical problems
All of these are speculation. And we'll look at each one and say, "Well if A happened, then B would have happened, and if B isn't there in the evidence, then A is ruled out." Stuff like that.
And while I don't ever expect that the speculative discussions here will ever take on that level of deliberation, all I'm asking/saying is tread lightly when doing so. (And I'm not even angry is saying any of this.) End of current rant.
- Ken