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The Enhanced Game – Sports, without drug testing
- meatjuice 3y agoJapanese government bought IOC for Olympic to be held in Tokyo. This kind of thing should never happen again.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoWhen atheles start collapsing of heart-failure on the track, then what?
- FigurativeVoid 3y agoThis is a conversation I've had before as well. It's not like PEDs are a free ticket to bonus athleticism. They come with huge costs.
- spydum 3y agothis is a risk even without PEDs though, right?
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- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoIf the health-risks were the same (and they aren’t) I don’t think we’d be complaining as much. We don’t want to encourage people compromising their health like this; but it’s not the elite-athletes I’m worried about, but their millions of followers - think: kids doing high-school athletics - or people who are inspired by major sporting events to start doing exercise - it benefits no-one by implicitly encouraging everyone to do sports PEDs. IMB4 anyone suggests that a Vyvanse prescription is equivalent to sports PEDs, despite both being significant risks to heart-health.
- eikenberry 3y agoThey lose the race and people will take that into account and try not to reproduce those results. It would balance out over time. There'd always be more than other sports, but sports doing bad things to their participants isn't unique. People are completely fine with the brain damage caused by sports like (US) football or boxing for example.
- aeturnum 3y ago> People are completely fine with the brain damage caused by sports like (US) football This is totally untrue. Football is currently in decline, with the greatest drop in youth participation[1]. A major factor seems to be the NFL's inability to keep the stories of brain damage quiet. These things take time but I think there's a good chance the brain damage is going to kill football as a popular sport. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/01/28/the-decline-of-football-is-real-and-its-accelerating/?sh=1b46578a2f37 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/01/28/the-decl...
- FigurativeVoid 3y agoI understand the reasoning as to why the Olympics are "drug-free," but I have never really understood the other side of the argument. Sports have improved in all sorts of ways. We have better training methods. We have better equipment. We have better medicine. While I'm not sure I'd try it, I would love to see the limits of human ability with PEDs. I'd be willing to bet that some of those drugs would translate well to medicine for non-elite athletes.
- Sesse__ 3y agoIt's the other way round; most PEDs _are_ medicine for regular people, abused by athletes. E.g., synthetic EPO is really useful if you just had chemotherapy for cancer and that killed off nearly all of your red blood cells. Anyways, if you want competitions with doping, there are high-level bodybuilder competitions that don't test.
- FigurativeVoid 3y agoYou're absolutely correct. Other sports lack it as well. Body building is fascinating, but not in the same category as say... running 100m in under 9 seconds.
- mpsprd 3y agoThis website ignores the big problem with enhancement medication: the health of participants. A future where there is an incentive to juice up athletes as much as possible is a recipe for disaster.
- MrPatan 3y agoThe participants ignore the health of the participants quite a bit already in many a sport. Let them do what they want, I say.
- andybak 3y agoYep but that's true of many sports. In fact most sports at high levels involve a heightened risk of life-changing injury. It's a difference of degree rather than type. Not that that invalidates your criticism but it does require it to be formulated in a more nuanced way.
- mpsprd 3y agoI agree with you, the higher the level, the more athletes will destroy their bodies in the process. My critism is about actively encouraging said destruction via promotion of stimulants. It's already bad as it is.
- Sesse__ 3y agoThe biggest problem isn't that the highest-level athletes would waste away their bodies (that's a big problem, but not the biggest); it is that below them, there will be thousands if not millions of second- and third-level athletes doing the same. With much less control. Imagine if every kid out there that wanted to be the next Ronaldo or Neymar (and could afford it) started taking steroids and EPO. That's a huge cost, and what did we gain exactly? A slightly lower number on some clock?
- 542458 3y agoThe argument that I’ve heard against this is that pro athlete training is already really dangerous - yet athletes are valuable enough that their handlers have some incentive to be reasonably cautious to not push things too far most of the time. Of course, we also know of many many athletes that have been permanently injured during training, so it’s hard for me to know how true the above is.
- nonameiguess 3y agoI agree with the basic moral principle of this and think it's a fine idea in theory, but how are you going to get any of the best athletes to participate? The only realistic route to doing something like that is the LIV thing using Saudi Oil money to just flat-out pay ungodly money to the point you overcome the natural competitive spirit that tends to motivate athletes and they're willing to be blacklisted from the actual top leagues. Fundamentally, the problem here isn't with the sports organizations themselves. It's with the countries they're in. Steroid use is illegal in most of the world. If you achieve any level of success worth paying attention to, some legislature, law enforcement body, or both will come try to shut you down. Even the IFBB has to pretend to drug test, as obviously bullshit and easy to beat as it is. Are you only ever going to host games in Mexico?
- esquivalience 3y agoThis seems hypocritical to me. I kind of get it as a way to level the playing field in one sense (though not, I expect, in many other senses). But their "inclusive language" guide is not internally consistent, and in fact breaks down in the first two paragraphs: It kicks off saying "Being enhanced isn’t a preference or a lifestyle choice." - but it immediately proceeds to contradict that by emphasising choice: "When we talk about science and being enhanced, we’re not talking about preferences or choices or value judgments" and "Inclusive language is a way of acknowledging and respecting the complete control and autonomy people have over their bodies." So... Yeah. It really does seem to be a choice.
- gensym 3y agoI think they're even more hypocritical in talking about "inclusivity" because allowing PEDs is the same thing as requiring them since no one who abstains will stand a chance against those who use them. There's no way to be inclusive of those who want to use PEDs and those who would rather not destroy their health with them.
- aeturnum 3y agoI am also skeptical it will "level" the playing field - at best it seems like it will "extend" it? Now athletic ability is the aggregate of natural ability and the ability to select & use drugs - but the genetic predispositions around these new areas won't be evenly distributed either! In addition it makes the gulf created by money even wider.
- codeulike 3y agoSNL, All Drug Olympics (1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU Addresses the main problem with this approach.
- anjel 3y agoThat's not a problem, its a ratings bonanza.
- andybak 3y agoI was intially convinced this was an art project or a hoax... The people on the team page seem to exist. But I'm still not entirely convinced there's not something else going on here.
- buzzdenver 3y agoIt is an exercise in trolling. The president, Aron D’Souza, is a Peter Thiel buddy, and sounds like somebody who would find bullet points like "Inclusive Language" and "How to come out as enhanced" hilarious in this context.
- andybak 3y agoOk. So an elaborate libertarianbro in-joke?
- buzzdenver 3y agoYup
- rmbyrro 3y agoWe live in strange times. Those working to keep chemical cheating away from honest sport competition are the ones called corrupt.
- hrdwdmrbl 3y agoI wish they would talk about the real corruption of the IPCC and other international sports organizations which basically exist to take bribes from host countries. There's a reason big sporting events often take place in dictatorships. (or maybe they do, I didn't browse super thoroughly)
- eps 3y agoThe Olympic Games Committee is corrupt to the core. That's what the website is referring to, though I agree it's a bit inconsequential as an argument against their anti-doping policies.
- rmbyrro 3y agoFollowing this trend, Hans Nieman may well create an "Enhanced Chess" organization
- janalsncm 3y agoI talked with my semi-pro baseball player friend about this. What if there were no restrictions about steroids? He told me about his friend’s roommate who used steroids. 99% of the time he was nice, but steroids gave him major temper issues. So I don’t think the only question is whether we can optimize athletic ability. The question is what the cost of doing that is. The cost not just to athletes but to those around them.
- roughly 3y agoWe really don't have a concept of "society" anymore, do we?
- jtorsella 3y agoThis is very transparently a gross, cruel attempt to parody and belittle trans people, as is made clear by the people involved and the language: “7 Tips on How To Come Out as Enhanced” And the “believe the science” and “colonialist” bits are very much a conservative-doing-an-impression-of-a-liberal thing. There’s worse if you read through their mission pages. I’m taken aback by the level of effort, honestly. It really astounds me how much money and effort there is behind ostracizing already marginalized people. It’s disgusting.
- hettygreen 3y agoI know you got down-voted, but the whole website is definitely fishy. At first I was expecting it to be a campaign for selling "enhanced" supplements, but a high-effort satire to say "well, see how rediculous it is to let trans people compete in sports???" is plausible, sadly.
- drankl 3y ago> It really astounds me how much money and effort there is behind ostracizing already marginalized people. The males who compete in women's sports aren't being marginalized, in fact quite the opposite, they are dominating the competition and causing female athletes to be marginalized in their own sports. It's rank misogyny, centering male demands and desires way above any sense of fairness and safety for women. If this website is indeed a parody aimed at the male intruders ruining women's sport, then I'm all for it. These cheating men and the sporting bodies that enable them deserve all the criticism they get.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoTrans people represent a fraction-of-a-percent of people in the total population. They are not “dominating” anyone. Trans people are ruining sports the same way Jewish people control the banking sector: they don’t. You also completely overlooked FtM trans people in your concern-trolling piece there.
- drankl 3y ago
- nradov 3y agoNot sure if serious or satire. But anyway, moral and legal issues aside this will never achieve mainstream success. Major sponsors and advertisers won't want to be associated with it due to the negative impact on their brand images. And modern sports only works as a business with that financial support. Can you imagine Adidas or Toyota putting their logo on this shitshow?
- hettygreen 3y agoWhy is the website so.. propaganda-ey? It sounds like they're casting atheletes who willingly take banned substances as a persecuted minority group that we need to stand united for, on par with the fight for LGBT rights or something. It's all super-defensive, like it was started by a few atheletes that got caught. The section called "Science is Real" tries to cast anti-doping as anti-science. Watch one of those documentaries on Lance Armstrong. Getting blood transfusions in the back of a van doesn't look fun. But I'm all for it. Why stop at substances? Use CRISPR to give a swimmer some webbed-feet.
- romafirst3 3y agoPretty sure this is a hoax/satire/anti-trans argument. So, going to just answer the anti trans piece. There is no trans athletes dominating sport. Even us talking about it is because conservatives want to use it as a wedge issue. For the mathematically inclined, slightly under 1% of the population are trans. When we see more than 1% of winners of athletic competitions being trans then we can talk about a problem. At the moment there just aren’t any trans athletes as the best in the world in their sport so it just isn’t an issue. I honestly think unless you are trans yourself you really should not have an opinion about trans people.
- drankl 3y ago> There is no trans athletes dominating sport. Yes there are, see https://shewon.org https://shewon.org for an increasingly long list of women who have been pushed off the podium by trans-identifying males competing as women. Some women are even quitting the sports they've trained so hard for, because these males are ruining the competition, e.g. see https://www.outkick.com/cycling-champ-hannah-arensman-retired-trans-athletes-womens-sports https://www.outkick.com/cycling-champ-hannah-arensman-retire....
- romafirst3 3y agoAre you for real? The last of those entries is “ Miss Greater Derry, New Hampshire Beauty Pageant (part of the Miss America Pageant events), 10 November” Literally nowhere near the top of the sport and like I said we would expect 1% of winners to be trans.
- drankl 3y agoNo comment on the 600+ cases of males dominating in women's sports then? It's all right there on the page you scrolled all the way down to get to the non-athletic competitions. That's 242 winning places which women lost to men in cycling, 117 in track and field, 65 in mountain biking, 43 in disc golf, 38 in swimming, 20 in powerlifting, and the rest in a wide variety of other sports. 197 first place podium spots that women athletes have lost to men, 177 second places lost, and 168 third places. Do you still believe this is not a problem for female athletes, even after being shown data proving otherwise?
- ZephyrOhm 3y agoThe majority of top level athletes are doping and not getting caught. You're delusional if you believe otherwise. There are even approved medical doping practices in sports, where athletes are given legal consent to use steroids and PEDs. As an example, note the uptick in football (soccer) players being asthmatic? Why? Because the asthma medications increase performance on the field. It's everywhere! Those that believe athletes aren't cheating are only people not involved in sports and unaware of the realities it takes to achieve those levels of performance. If you're not doping, you're not winning, whether it's drug tested or not. There's literally drug test avoidance coaches all over. Entire industries for it. Common knowledge isn't the same as truth.
- zingababba 3y agoI suggest watching this video, it's pretty good - https://youtu.be/HQLweuRSD9M https://youtu.be/HQLweuRSD9M (Why I'm Against Anti-Doping) - made by Clarence Kennedy, an enhanced vegan olympic weight-lifter that puts up insane numbers. I've been enhanced myself for something like 15 years now and I gotta say, it's always funny to me how blind people are to the fact that athletes are going to take stuff, period.