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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31339 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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When the media says taking steroids is cheating, is it really cheating if everyone is doing them? There is no way around this: banning the substances means people find ways around it, allowing drugs creates an arms race of drug use. It's like this for all competitive endeavors it seems. People will do anything for an edge.

Another way to look at it. Call it "cheating" or not, it is a rule (and an enforced rule) that anyone caught with drug use is declared to have lost. It might be part of the game to be on drugs, but in this case it is also part of the game not to be caught.

Yes, it's still cheating even if everyone is doing it. Cheating is not defined by how common or uncommon it is.

Cheating is not defined by how common or uncommon it is.

I think that it is, actually, and feel like the idea that it isn't represents a confusion of means with ends.

The objective of sport isn't to follow the rulebook like holy writ, and the "winner of sport" is not he who most religiously adheres to the commandments of the International Olympic Committee Good Practice Handbook Subsection 17 Paragraph C. The written rules are a means, not an end. The end is... some combination of showcasing human physical excellence, putting on a good show for the spectators, and getting from the start line to the finish line faster than others.

When the start line is (figuratively) "doped up to the eyeballs" and the finish line is "100km of French cycling routes away" then you are still competing 'fairly' against your opponent if he's as doped up as you. That both if you exceed the 14ppm blood oxygenation level stipulated by the IOC... who cares? Other than sports lawyers who want to carve out a permanent need for their own employment, I don't think it benefits anyone to be a rules-autist about this stuff.

Sport has a third tenet though, which Coubertin and his buds might actually have been convinced is the most important: it's supposed to foster good health and morality by rallying all around a universal human endeavour.

How wicked is it that the institutions setup to give good rolemodels to youth have become spectacles of hypocrisy?

Cheating isn't just about fairness, it is also about honesty and truth. So yeah if everyone does it, it's still cheating because I care that the people earning the millions and being on the posters are a bunch of fucking liars. Sodom was a wicked city, "everyone does it" is not an excuse.

At least wrestling had the guts to admit that it's all fake. But it's no longer sport then, just dynamic entertainment.

The rules are indeed a means, not an end. But not following the rules is cheating, full stop. The rules may need to be amended if they aren't serving a good purpose, but if you break the rules then you are a cheater even if everyone else does it.

Yup. Primary reason the anti drug rules are important is because with them pros will ride the razor's edge of discoverability; without them they will ride the razor's edge of ODing or death.

A lot the drugs athletes take under PED bans right now are just testosterone but re-synthesized to avoid detection. There's a lot of ways to get T levels up, and the safest ways to do it are also the most studied and easiest to detect. In this way, PED bans actually incentivize athletes to take riskier drugs.

People like the narrative idea of a Faustian bargain so much they assume it's always true that there's one on offer. But it's possible if under a scheme where PED's are allowed that the rational choice for athletes is sticking to basic steroid cycles and blood doping that gets them 95% of the way there and avoid the riskier experimental stuff that might not even help.

It's important because I find it unaesthetic to have athletes dying from ODs on PE drugs, and, more crucially, so do the people running the olympics.

that is an excellent point right up there with the thing where due to illegal drugs being illegal people will get them from street dealers, whose drugs are going to be massively more dangerous than a theoretical legal equivalent.

I'm not seeing an important part here?

If pros want to put dangerous substances into their body in pursuit of the limits of human achievement, that's their perogative. It is after all their body. And for a more noble and quixotic cause than most people put dangerous substances into their body.

It's important because I find it unaesthetic to have athletes dying from ODs on PE drugs, and, more crucially, so do the people running the olympics.

Only if they don't misrepresent to the fans that their achievements were achieved without drugs.

And even then, people act in stupid and self-destructive ways and having a drugs-allowed athletic competition is a magnet for people to kill themselves using drugs.

Only if they don't misrepresent to the fans that their achievements were achieved without drugs.

I hate is wen people do this. Probably because openly admitting drug use would open up possible consequences. Discussing steroid use on YouTube may mean demonization for that particular video.

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