'Normalization of deviance'

I've often drawn a comparison to space walks and cave dives. A lot of the same technology and planning go into our dives that NASA uses. Yesterday, during a conversation at the dive shop, someone used the NASA term 'Normalization of deviance'

I decided to google it and found this talk by a former NASA Mission Specialist on the shuttle program. Wow, does it apply to cave diving. There are four parts to this talk, here is part one. There should be links to the other three parts if you are watching on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o

I thought you were talking about grabbing women by the #####, or Harvey Weinstein. My bad, you mentioned "deviance" not "deviants".

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Originally Posted by OFG-1

I thought you were talking about grabbing women by the #####, or Harvey Weinstein. My bad, you mentioned "deviance" not "deviants".

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The behavior you refer to and the fact that it seems to be acceptable to a large portion of our citizenry is a good example of normalization of deviance. It's hardly even news anymore.

On set, the term "weinsteined" has already been in use.

At both the CDS and the agency that shall remain nameless workshops on CO the Cocodrillo accident I spent a whole section on "Normalization of Deviance" and how it applied.

The phrase "plan the work, work the plan" sounded VERY familiar :)


I like the term "predictable surprises." It's true. We know that eventually that O ring is going to fail or that light is going to die. We know what's going to happen in a lot of cases.


The shortcuts that kill people... This vid really made me think. How many blind jumps did that guy make and get away with it before the fatal one? How many unlabeled tanks did that guy dive with before the fatal one? We're all guilty of shortcuts.


One of the best divers I know is very good at avoiding shortcuts. (kensuf, aka Ken Sallot) I even remember thinking "Jeeze Ken, you run a primary EVERY dive at Ginnie?, what a boy scout.", but thinking about it in the context of this video, I realize that's what makes him a great diver and usually the diver that's able to go in and pick up after someone else's shortcuts.

Mr Lewis wrote this some years ago:
https://decodoppler.wordpress.com/20...n-of-deviance/

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Originally Posted by OFG-1

I thought you were talking about grabbing women by the #####".

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That is even exceeding normalization.
I learned such behavior nowadays is considered presidential!

Decades before I heard the term "normalization of deviance", my father told me, "If you do something stupid and dangerous and get away with it a few times, you stop thinking of it as dangerous."