LCF wrote:Well, I understand not liking the divisions that follow labels. But I will again say that there is a different mindset between what I was taught in open water, and the way people doing staged decompression dives approach their diving. And it's not a bright line, but rather that the deeper or more complex the dive, the more thought ought to go into it, and the more things that you don't know can cause you trouble.
Nowhere in the PADI educational sequence (the one with which I am familiar, both as a student and as someone watching her husband go through instructor training) is gas management taught. But it's integral to technical dive training, and I think it's a good idea for recreational divers doing deeper dives. Similarly, few of the divers I've dived with on tropical tour boats do any kind of skills practice, but technical divers stay current on skills, and I think it's a good idea for people doing deeper or more complex dives that are still within no decompression limits.
I think there is a transition in mindset, and I think it's a good transition for divers who are working close to the limits, and it is taught.
I can see where you're coming from, there's a huge difference in "mindset" between how you were initially taught to dive and how you dive now. I don't think that's a difference between "technical" and "recreational", however.
I think you're seeing it more from the perspective of where you took your initial training ... which is a shop where instructors are encouraged to take a very narrow ... and what they perceive to be "traditional" mindset toward diving. I don't believe that has as much to do with recreational vs tech as it does shop culture.
Back when I was being mentored by Uncle Pug, he used to tell me that I needed to "rethink my approach to that dive". In his own way, he was giving me the same change in perspective that you're talking about. But it had little to do with tech diving, and everything to do with helping me understand the different choices available to me at whatever level I chose to apply them.
He helped me understand that diving's really just a continuum ... rather than a discrete set of different approaches ... and that as we progress to longer, deeper, more complex dive plans it's not because we're getting into some different way of diving, but rather because we're learning to choose better tools, and use better methods, to build on what we've already been doing.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
, you have been the most informative on the subject, 
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and begin flaming away as their hot button got pushed, but I for one have really enjoyed the discussion.