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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44990 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I consume a lot of media generated by former SEALs, and have heard commentary both directly about this case and about training in selection in general.

The impression I get is that allowing PEDs would be akin to lowering the standard, and that's not okay. Lowering the standard means the guy next to you in combat is less likely to be able to pull his own weight and therefore more likely to get himself and others killed. Further, while the training is very physically demanding, the physical burden is a means to weed out individuals that are not able or willing to push themselves through the pain. PEDs would supposedly make for a lighter physical burden, which means a candidate could get through without needing to exert the same level of mental toughness.

In the 1980s, about 40 percent of candidates graduated. Over the past 25 years, the average has dropped to 26 percent. In 2021, it was just 14 percent, and in Seaman Mullen’s class this year, less than 10 percent.

From what I hear, the standards have changed very little. This stat is likely an artifact of far more people being given the chance to try. The Navy has expanded the SEAL pipeline by recruiting sailors directly into the occupation, rather than requiring recruits to select a non-spec-ops career first and then apply for SEAL training. They've also added training for the training, with a course that will prep you for BUD/S itself.

Three weeks in, Seaman Caserta collapsed while carrying a boat. Instructors yelled at him to get up, and when he said he couldn’t, his father said, they made him quit the course. An X-ray later revealed a broken leg.

To add to this, his mom tells a story that the instructors rang the bell on his behalf, and that his tibia was broken in two places.

From what I hear, this is bullshit. Quitting is voluntary. Instructors will badger and heckle you to quit, but they can't quit on your behalf. Even if they did ring the bell, in order to quit you have to sign paperwork asserting that you are quitting before you can be processed out.

If you end up with an injury that prevents you from completing the training you can try again after you heal.

I'm also wondering exactly what the X-ray showed. His mom says his tibia was broken in two places, but from everything I can find you would not be able to walk, much less run, with such an injury. You can't just grit your teeth and push through the pain, your leg will collapse. If the leg bending in the wrong spots isn't noticeable, the massive swelling from blood and bone marrow spilling out of the fractures would be.

The impression I get is that allowing PEDs would be akin to lowering the standard, and that's not okay.

Cute theory, but in any athletic endeavor, especially one where there is no testing, if someone is using, then all the winners are probably using. Some of the former seals whose content you consume are probably using, including some of the ones that are moralizing about it.

Further, while the training is very physically demanding, the physical burden is a means to weed out individuals that are not able or willing to push themselves through the pain. PEDs would supposedly make for a lighter physical burden, which means a candidate could get through without needing to exert the same level of mental toughness.

That doesn't make any sense. By that same logic, they should weed out athletic recruits, ban training before BUDS, and specifically pick recruits with sub-optimal builds for the course. PEDs only make for a lighter physical burden in the same way that being in good shape, or being the optimal size and build, or any number of other natural or trained advantages would make for a lighter physical burden.

Malcolm Gladwell, of all people, makes that argument really well here: [Largely quoting another work]

“Dope is not really a magical boost as much as it is a way to control against declines,” Hamilton writes. Doping meant that cyclists finally could train as hard as they wanted. It was the means by which pudgy underdogs could compete with natural wonders. “People think doping is for lazy people who want to avoid hard work,” Hamilton writes. For many riders, the opposite was true:

EPO granted the ability to suffer more; to push yourself farther and harder than you’d ever imagined, in both training and racing. It rewarded precisely what I was good at: having a great work ethic, pushing myself to the limit and past it. I felt almost giddy: this was a new landscape. I began to see races differently. They weren’t rolls of the genetic dice, or who happened to be on form that day. They didn’t depend on who you were. They depended on what you did—how hard you worked, how attentive and professional you were in your preparation.

[This] is a vision of sports in which the object of competition is to use science, intelligence, and sheer will to conquer natural difference. Hamilton and Armstrong may simply be athletes who regard this kind of achievement as worthier than the gold medals of a man with the dumb luck to be born with a random genetic mutation.

The recruit who uses PEDs is arguably showing a level of dedication far above that of the recruit who does not. He is showing skill at (often illegally) acquiring the tools he needs, he is showing diligence in dosing and cycling, he had to train hard to use these tools. At any rate, it's no more or less unfair than a million natural advantages between candidates.

I think you'd be able to walk unassisted with a hairline tibia fracture, even though it'd feel shitty and be a bad idea.

Not that I think we should take the story at face value.

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