Searched: "outcome bias"
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The title of this blog might appear to be a bit strong, but consider the following: The man dropped the vase, and it broke. The vase broke when it was dropped by the man. The first sentence puts the action (or agency) on the man, on the ‘who’ was involved, whereas the second statement focu...
A recent discussion about risk management in a remote diving location where a diver had suspected DCI is the prompt for this blog. While it was prompted by a remote location, the principles are applicable to all the diving we do. The first part of risk management is understanding and recognising...
When you go diving, do you even consider what ‘safe’ means? ‘Safe’ can mean many things to many different people. A 10m reef dive for some has a level of risk, maybe from the wildlife that resides there or the currents or waves that are present. A 30m wreck dive with some level of penetration has...
How often have you heard the phrase, normally after something ‘obvious’ has gone wrong, “They should have used their common sense” or “Has common sense died out?” To you (or those observing the outcome) it was obvious that the situation would develop in the manner it did. This is partly because o...
Diving is an activity that takes place in a hazardous environment. We have not yet evolved to live in the water, and nor can we survive for very long underwater without some form of mechanical or technical support (therefore Darwinism doesn't apply!). In addition to drowning, we have other hazard...
Accidents, incidents and near misses occur in diving every day. Fortunately, most of them don’t end up with a serious or fatal outcome. While the media focus in diving safety is on the fatalities because they are emotive and public, there are more lessons that can be learned from incidents and ne...
The problem with words like success, failure, good, bad, better, worse, safe, and unsafe, is that they rely on a context to derive meaning. Over the last two weeks, I have been facilitating a two-week workshop to develop two more Human Diver instructors, Windal Adams and Andrzej Gornicki. This i...
"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But, to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect." The same goes for diving. And for the nuclear industry. So how have aviation and nuclear become so safe and what can diving learn f...
It was great to see the detailed report from the NSS-CDS covering two recent cave diving fatalities, highlighting the technical details behind the two events, and identifying a number of potential causal and contributory factors. The analysis of the equipment, dive computers and details of the re...
A formulaic approach to diver training helps students pass a class, but does it help a student dive in the real world where there are uncertainties and unknowns? The problem of knowledge transfer i.e., genuine education, is not just limited to diving but exists in many domains. How do you take th...
