
Russians No Longer Dispute Olympic Doping Operation - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/27/sports/olympics/russia-doping.html
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theparanoid
Amusing “We have to find those reasons why young sportsmen are taking doping,
why they agree to be doped,”. I take peds for programming, Modafinil. it's a
cold hard world, results are rewarded.

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ggreer
Like most jobs, programming is positive sum. If you take modafinil or caffeine
or carphedon, you'll write more software of higher quality (hopefully). You
won't reduce the amount or quality of software written by others. And the
drugs you take don't have long-term disadvantages. For example, modafinil
won't give you early onset Alzheimer's.

Contrast that to doping in sport. Sport is zero-sum. For me to win, you must
lose. And many performance-enhancing drugs can cause long-term health issues.
Steroids can enlarge the heart and damage its valves. EPO can thicken the
blood enough to cause embolism. If all athletes are doping, none of them
benefit. They simply suffer more and die sooner. Doping regulations help solve
this coordination problem among athletes.

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nradov
We don't know yet whether modafinil and other nootropics have long-term
disadvantages. The research just hasn't been done yet to say what effect they
will have after 30+ years of use.

As a thought experiment ask yourself this: if there are no disadvantages then
why hasn't the human brain evolved to operate that way normally without
medication? I suspect there are some trade-offs, even if they aren't readily
apparent.

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ggreer
Modafinil was invented in the 1970's. Some people have been using it daily for
almost 40 years. If there were long-term effects, we'd know by now.

> …if there are no disadvantages then why hasn't the human brain evolved to
> operate that way normally without medication?

1\. Evolution can't search solution spaces as efficiently as modern biochem.

2\. Until very recently, humans were calorie limited. Stimulants like
modafinil increase metabolism and suppress appetite. That would be selected
against during a famine.

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TwoNineFive
I guess you don't see the irony of stating that governments and institutions
would tell you the truth about Modafinil, in a thread where the subject matter
is governments and institutions being corrupt.

I'm not taking a position on Modafinil. It might be safe. It might not be
safe. The point is that I don't know, and neither do you.

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ggreer
A modafinil coverup is highly unlikely, as it would require all governments to
be corrupt _in the same way_. It's also an unstable equilibrium. In such a
scenario, the first government that fails to suppress the truth gains
credibility, and all other governments lose credibility. In other words: each
government has an incentive to defect and reveal any health issues related to
the drug.

Not to mention: studies of modafinil show it has a slight neuroprotective
effect.[1]

1\.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16940766](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16940766)

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akytt
There's a difference between balancing close to the boundaries of permissible
and systematically exceeding those limits while pushing athletes to danger
their health for political benefit.

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somesortof
This is so obvious that the majority of top athletes are using some sort of
steroids. There is no shame in that.

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paulddraper
[citation needed]

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brianwawok
Not really. Sports in general and the Olympics in specific are very very very
dirty. Enjoy watching it. Don't compare it to what you can do if you don't
dope.

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Joky
While possibly true for some specific sports, I highly doubt this is a
generality. So +1 to [citation needed].

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dpark
Every so often there's a big scandal in another sport as pervasive doping is
uncovered. It happened to baseball. It happened to cycling. It happening to
sprinting. It's also happened to numerous elite individuals across nearly
every sport.

At some point it becomes unreasonable to believe that only _some_ sports are
subject to doping problems when they all have basically the same
opportunities, the same pressures, and the same human nature.

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untog
But the Olympics have doping tests. It's how the Russians were found out.

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brianwawok
You mean years that the athletes can swap samples out?

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yarou
Not really news IMO. It's quite obvious that most world class athletes use
some form of chemical enhancement.

The substances available today for doping are minor buffs, though.
Mildronate[1] increases cardiac efficiency/ throughput, for example. However,
only a really well-conditioned athlete would gain anything from these
substances. Even then we're talking about a 10-15% gain in efficiency.

What I'm personally really excited about are SARMs[2]. These are legitimate
fountain of youth compounds that can increase bone density and possible muscle
wasting due to age. We may finally have the tools available for viable life
extension within this decade.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meldonium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meldonium)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_androgen_receptor_mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_androgen_receptor_modulator)

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Moshe_Silnorin
SARMs are not fountains of youth. Life extension would reqiure very advanced
tissue engineering.

