Tank Valve Issue - Out of Air Incident

[Sat Diver]

The average IQ in the US is 98 - two digits.

 

[agilis]

My point exactly.

 

[boulderjohn]

Is it the DM's responsibility to check every single divers tank valve before they hit the water? I'm not sure I understand your comment?

I am playing "what if?" I have been on many, many boats in which it was indeed the DM's duty based on operator procedures to check people's air. Once you have established that procedure to the point that an attorney can argue taht divers depend upon it, it is conceivable that a DM's failure to do this can become an issue. (No, I don't know that it has ever happened.) See the next comment for more.

I've had good luck telling folks not to touch my gear, but most of the ops I use regularly host tech divers... which means they probably understand not to mess with your gear when you tell them to. I've also never had someone question me about my valve preference, but if they did, I'd simply tell them it was my tank, and I was going to dive it fully opened whether they liked it or not.

My last few dives were tech training dives done at recreational depths. My group was in doubles and a deco bottle, but the rest of the boat was standard rec gear. As each rec diver prepared to splash, the DM checked their air, obviously as instructed by his employer. When we reached the platform, he asked us to check to see if our air was on, explaining that he would do it himself but he was instructed not to touch the valves on doubles.

The average IQ in the US is 98 - two digits.

That is about what it is throughout the world, and that will never change.

IQ tests are norm referenced, and they are designed so that the median score will come out as close to 100 as possible. There should always be as many people below 100 as above it. If not, the test is adjusted to make that happen.

The same is true with SATs by the way. IN that case, the median score intended to be 500. there are three standard deviations above the norm (600, 700, and 800) and three standard deviations below the norm (400, 300, and 200).

If some magnificent wizard would wave a magic wand over the population and give everyone at least the level we consider to be genius now, those tests would be rewritten, and the mean IQ would still be near 100 and the mean SAT score would still be near 500. That is why it is so silly when people compare SAT scores from different eras. We are talking about different tests.

 

[The Chairman]

That is why it is so silly when people compare SAT scores from different eras. We are talking about different tests.

Sez you!!! I'm still pretty darn happy with my SAT scores from the mid 70's!

 

[boulderjohn]

Sez you!!! I'm still pretty darn happy with my SAT scores from the mid 70's!

And I am happy with my SAT scores from the 60s.

What I am talking about is when you read newspaper articles talking about the rise or fall of the median SAT score over a period of time. That rising and falling is meaningless, because the test is being revised constantly with the goal of keeping the median score near 500.

In theory, an IQ test measures intelligence/ability and an SAT test measures education (etc.). Neither is true. There is actually very little difference in what they measure. You cannot measure ability/intelligence without throwing in what one has learned academically and culturally. (I remember an example of an elementary test in which a key choice for the students was a fire hydrant, which is problematic for rural students who have never seen one.) More importantly, you cannot measure academic preparation and get the desired bell shaped curve. The only way an academic test produces bell shaped results is if the test is intentionally manipulated to create those results or if the results are manipulated to produce that curve. If an accurate academic test produces a bell shape result profile, it means that there was no actual instruction taking place. Test like the SAT therefore must be primarily based on the student's native ability and (more importantly) cultural experiences outside the classroom.

 

[agilis]

Boulderjohn, most people are above average, right? I love norm referenced tests. A good friend of mine is a psychometrician with ETS. He facetiously calls himself a psychomeretrician. This is a lot of funny business in testing, especially in the various achievement tests used to measure student progress. Real voodoo science.

The old MA/CA Intellectual Quotient formula can never be really valid when what is being tested remains so poorly defined and understood. As you probably know, a basic underlying principle in IQ testing is that mental age tops out at 15 years. Beyond that point it is assumed that what is being measured is learned, not native intelligence. IQ tests given to adults assume that learning, to a degree, reflects underlying native intelligence, however that may be defined. The tests are corrupted by cultural factors and extreme imprecision. Comparative numbers are important to politicians and other two-digit IQ types, so a thriving business has developed, peddling the irrelevant to the illiterate.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I am playing "what if?" I have been on many, many boats in which it was indeed the DM's duty based on operator procedures to check people's air. Once you have established that procedure to the point that an attorney can argue taht divers depend upon it, it is conceivable that a DM's failure to do this can become an issue. (No, I don't know that it has ever happened.) See the next comment for more.

My last few dives were tech training dives done at recreational depths. My group was in doubles and a deco bottle, but the rest of the boat was standard rec gear. As each rec diver prepared to splash, the DM checked their air, obviously as instructed by his employer. When we reached the platform, he asked us to check to see if our air was on, explaining that he would do it himself but he was instructed not to touch the valves on doubles.

That is about what it is throughout the world, and that will never change.

IQ tests are norm referenced, and they are designed so that the median score will come out as close to 100 as possible. There should always be as many people below 100 as above it. If not, the test is adjusted to make that happen.

The same is true with SATs by the way. IN that case, the median score intended to be 500. there are three standard deviations above the norm (600, 700, and 800) and three standard deviations below the norm (400, 300, and 200).

If some magnificent wizard would wave a magic wand over the population and give everyone at least the level we consider to be genius now, those tests would be rewritten, and the mean IQ would still be near 100 and the mean SAT score would still be near 500. That is why it is so silly when people compare SAT scores from different eras. We are talking about different tests.

Wow, your comments about IQ being the same throughout the world are not consistent with what I've found.

There are very real differences in average IQ between different races.

As for DM checking people's valves on some boats.. sure that may be the norm in some operations, but it does not imply that I was obligated to do it on the boat I was working from on one particular day and it certainly doesn't mean that I would be forced to lie in court about it??

I've been involved in court cases where divers were killed (or crippled) and never had to lie about anything. I always tell everyone involved that when somebody gets killed (or carted off by EMS), we have to be really careful to all deliver the exact same message and to not tell any lies.

I'm really questioning the validity of some of your comments. You can easily look up the issue of IQ/Race.

I don't teach diving any more so I can't look up your comments about DM responsibility.

Do the new training materials indicate that a DM is now responsible for checking everyone's tank valve on the boat or is that some thing you came up with?

 

[boulderjohn]

As for DM checking people's valves on some boats.. sure that may be the norm in some operations, but it does not imply that I was obligated to do it on the boat I was working from on one particular day and it certainly doesn't mean that I would be forced to lie in court about it??


I'm really questioning the validity of some of your comments. You can easily look up the issue of IQ/Race.

I don't teach diving any more so I can't look up your comments about DM responsibility.

Do the new training materials indicate that a DM is now responsible for checking everyone's tank valve on the boat or is that some thing you came up with?

I wonder how I got the idea mentioned in another thread that you seem to have a reflexive need to insult me? I will try to be measured in response.

Sure you can look up the results of race and IQ tests, and in doing so you will demonstrate how little you understand about the issue. The IQ test is designed to have a median score and three standard deviations above and below that median for the entire population. There will ALWAYS be differences within subsets of that entire population.

I NEVER said that checking for air had become a requirement for the DM job. I suggested that it is POSSIBLE that an attorney could argue that the commonality of the practice and especially the existence of an employer's policy MIGHT become an issue should the employee (the DM) not follow that policy as the diver expected. A similar discussion arose in relation to the Watson "honeymoon murderer" case. In that situation, the operator had a policy that required divers to take a test dive prior to doing the real dives. The operator decided not to do it in this case, even though the woman who died was a new OW diver on her first ocean dive ever. There was some discussion about the possibility that the operator could be sued for failing to follow its own policy. (I don't believe they were sued, but some attorneys raised the possibility.)

 

[agilis]

Race? IQ? Can you define either concept? Are we talking about the human race, or the Irish race? Something intermediate, perhaps?

IQ is a ratio comparing mental age to chronological age. It was developed to measure the relative intellectual development of children: a ten year old with a mental age of ten is 10/10, or an IQ of 100. A ten year old with a mental age of 15 is 15/10, or an IQ of 150. A ten year old with a mental age of 5 is 5/10, or an IQ of 50. That's why it's called an Intellectual Quotient. It is not really valid when used to measure the 'intelligence' of adults because cultural elements become predominant. We do, foolishly, use them for adult populations, but any competent and honest (there are boatloads of frauds) researcher knows that such testing is really invadid. You can measure some kinds of achievement and skill, but it's extremely difficult to measure intellectual ability within a culture, and impossible to do so cross-culturally.

On the other hand, I know that my cat Reggie is much smarter than most scuba instructors. Not all. Just some.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I wonder how I got the idea mentioned in another thread that you seem to have a reflexive need to insult me? I will try to be measured in response.

Sure you can look up the results of race and IQ tests, and in doing so you will demonstrate how little you understand about the issue. The IQ test is designed to have a median score and three standard deviations above and below that median for the entire population. There will ALWAYS be differences within subsets of that entire population.

I NEVER said that checking for air had become a requirement for the DM job. I suggested that it is POSSIBLE that an attorney could argue that the commonality of the practice and especially the existence of an employer's policy MIGHT become an issue should the employee (the DM) not follow that policy as the diver expected. A similar discussion arose in relation to the Watson "honeymoon murderer" case. In that situation, the operator had a policy that required divers to take a test dive prior to doing the real dives. The operator decided not to do it in this case, even though the woman who died was a new OW diver on her first ocean dive ever. There was some discussion about the possibility that the operator could be sued for failing to follow its own policy. (I don't believe they were sued, but some attorneys raised the possibility.)

Thanks for the clarification on the DM responsibilities. I was never taught that it was required in my dive training, I guess it hasn't changed.

As for the IQ question, I guess if you define the "population" as the human race as a whole, then yes, IQ scores would be "the same throughout the world".