Reg Braithwaite
Contributor
I'm late to this party, but here's my perspective on "Why all the UTD Haters." It is not based on twenty years of diving experience, in fact it is based on observing similar social dynamics around choices in other areas. It may be some kind of universal behaviour of people, or I may be way off base.
Certain systems are inherently complex. Programming, running a professional football team, diving, they all involve making a lot of choices, and the choices are all interrelated. You don't choose singles vs. doubles independently of choosing wreck penetration vs. blue water, for example. Such complex systems generally don't have one perfect optimum solution. Instead, there are a number of "local maxima" that represent sets of complementary choices.
Local maxima have an interesting property: If you make small changes to them, you make them worse. For example, the "standard" choice of poodle jacket, short hose, split fins, back mounted single, &c. &c. is a local maximum. For a certain type of casual diver, this is a local maximum. If you stick a long hose on this arrangement, it is worse, not better. You have to make a big change to another local maximum for the long hose to work, you need a different harness arrangement, you need new training, and so forth.
Speaking as a fairly naïve observer, I see the anti-UTD thing as a classic local maximum problem. The Hogarthian setup has been optimized over time into a local maximum. The sidemount setup seems to be still evolving somewhat, but some aspects appear to be stabilizing, and the concept of independent doubles seems to be part of that. So if a diver perceives that they are in a local maximum and you ask them to make one change, like adopting an isolator manifold for their sidemounted doubles, it appears to be worse, not better.
I am not saying that the Z-manifold is junk. It could be that if you make a large change, you jump to a different local maximum. That sounds like what the UTD folks are saying, that it makes sense when you also adopt special training for it, when you integrate it with training on other systems from singles to CCRs, and what-not. I may be misinterpreting what I have read, so I am loathe to argue whether they are right or not.
But my conjecture is that UTD "hate" is going to be 100% natural and normal when you consider that most non-UTD divers are sitting in a local maximum and thinking about making just one change. Local maxima are intolerant of small changes, it's always worse to make a small change.
Certain systems are inherently complex. Programming, running a professional football team, diving, they all involve making a lot of choices, and the choices are all interrelated. You don't choose singles vs. doubles independently of choosing wreck penetration vs. blue water, for example. Such complex systems generally don't have one perfect optimum solution. Instead, there are a number of "local maxima" that represent sets of complementary choices.
Local maxima have an interesting property: If you make small changes to them, you make them worse. For example, the "standard" choice of poodle jacket, short hose, split fins, back mounted single, &c. &c. is a local maximum. For a certain type of casual diver, this is a local maximum. If you stick a long hose on this arrangement, it is worse, not better. You have to make a big change to another local maximum for the long hose to work, you need a different harness arrangement, you need new training, and so forth.
Speaking as a fairly naïve observer, I see the anti-UTD thing as a classic local maximum problem. The Hogarthian setup has been optimized over time into a local maximum. The sidemount setup seems to be still evolving somewhat, but some aspects appear to be stabilizing, and the concept of independent doubles seems to be part of that. So if a diver perceives that they are in a local maximum and you ask them to make one change, like adopting an isolator manifold for their sidemounted doubles, it appears to be worse, not better.
I am not saying that the Z-manifold is junk. It could be that if you make a large change, you jump to a different local maximum. That sounds like what the UTD folks are saying, that it makes sense when you also adopt special training for it, when you integrate it with training on other systems from singles to CCRs, and what-not. I may be misinterpreting what I have read, so I am loathe to argue whether they are right or not.
But my conjecture is that UTD "hate" is going to be 100% natural and normal when you consider that most non-UTD divers are sitting in a local maximum and thinking about making just one change. Local maxima are intolerant of small changes, it's always worse to make a small change.