
The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-moral-argument-for-doping-in-sports
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MaxScheiber
I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a
black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully
aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to
argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies.

I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that
athletes play in the lives of children and teenagers. It's really not okay for
high school athletes to use steroids. I was under the impression that
professional athletes using steroids influences budding athletes to use
steroids both directly ("I can get to where Barry Bonds is by using steroids")
and indirectly (feeling pressured to use PEDs in order to compete). I seem to
remember this being a controversial topic in the news 10-15 years ago.

Steroid use in professional bodybuilding isn't as big of a deal as steroid use
in professional sports. While part of that is attributable to the goals of
those respective fields, another part is attributable to bodybuilders not
being widespread role models in the way that baseball or basketball players
are.

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cromulent
I tried to find the original reasoning for banning doping and couldn't do so.
According to Wikipedia the IOC banned doping in the 1960s after some sports
federations began to do so. It was widespread at the time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games#Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games#Response)

Could it be simply part of a conservative response to drug-taking in the
1960's? Reefer madness? I don't know.

Please comment if you can find a source. If we know the original reasoning,
then it would be good to critique it 50 years later.

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kmnc
I imagine the original reasoning was mostly due to the notion that "it is
against the competitive spirit and destroys the integrity of the game".
Honestly that is still the best reasoning for banning doping in my opinion.
Maybe it is just personal opinion but doping in baseball almost destroyed the
sport because of a tarnished reputation. If I knew doping was allowed in say
gymnastics for example I wouldn't watch it at all, it would become boring.
Sure, I am likely overvaluing the effects of doping in gaining an advantage
but I think the biggest problem is that of attribution.

How do I correctly attribute skill to a player I know is doping, or a sport
that is full of doping? If we ever get to the point where sports radio is
filled with discussions about "Well, this guy is really good but Jordan didn't
have XZ-87 injected into his body so you know how can we compare them?" then I
think the integrity of sports is simply dead. Maybe sports become something
else and we are all fine with it but in my opinion doping destroys the
integrity and spirit of sports and that is still the best argument against it.

~~~
nosideeffects
Drugs don't increase "skill," though. And on the contrary, if everyone was
doping I think the event might actually be more interesting to watch since the
average fitness of the players would be increased.

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ClintEhrlich
My perspective on performance-enhancing drugs has changed because of my
involvement in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and mixed martial arts.

When I was a teenager, I started training at a gym where several UFC fighters
spoke openly with me about their use of steroids. And in the decade since
then, I have experienced the pains of rigorous training and competition
without PEDs, while also interacting with lots of grapplers who discussed how
PEDs helped them.

None of them believed that the competitive advantage from steroids comes from
the additional muscular strength they provide during a fight or a jiu-jitsu
match. Instead, the steroids allowed them to train with a frequency and
intensity that is virtually impossible for natural competitors.

This recuperative advantage is still "cheating," but it feels morally
different in the sense that the athlete is _enhancing_ his technique by
training more, not using steroid-enabled strength to _compensate_ for poor
technique. (The same is not true of something like blood doping.)

I'm not arguing that PEDs should necessarily be permitted in athletic
competition. That would be my preference, but I recognize there are colorable
reasons why we should avoid glamorizing the practice in the eyes of teens.
However, as a sportsman, I respect a competitor who is willing to risk his
health in exchange for the chance to train as hard as humanly possible.

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jacques_chester
I am not aware of any system of morality in which "but everyone else did it"
is considered to be a watertight argument.

I feel strongly about matter, having competed in weightlifting, because of the
recent influx of steroid apologists into the weightlifting community. The
question of whether PEDs _should_ be allowed is distinct from whether they
_are_ allowed.

A sport is an arbitrary collection of objectively determinable athletic
trials. It doesn't really matter how they start. Two people want to see who is
the "best" at something, so they compete.

Eventually there is an argument about who won. Alex thinks Bob has cheated,
because Bob used a technique or technology that Alex thinks grants an unfair
advantage.

So Alex and Bob agree to _rules_. These rules create the space of permissible
actions in which the arbitrary trials take place. For example, for sprinting,
the rules create a space in which driving a sports car is excluded.

Eventually a name is attached. What is the sport?

 _The sport is the rules_. It follows that actions taken outside the rules,
even if unobserved, are _not_ part of that sport. Consider the sprinting
example: if the stadium lights go out and I drive to the finish line in 5
seconds, did I win, given that nobody detected my action? No: I did not win. I
was incorrectly observed to be first, but I did not win.

If you argue that it's based on the _observation_ , it still requires rules
against which the observation is applied. If instead you argue that there
_are_ no rules, then you do not have a defined athletic trial -- you can
sprint, I can throw, and both of us claim to be the best pistol shooter at the
end of the contest.

That is, sports is a positivist legal framework. There is no "real" sport
outside of the rules. _The rules are the sport_. If you break them, even
unobserved, then by definition you cannot win and have not won, even when you
appeared to.

The nature of modern professional sports being what it is, this means that
most winners are the 20-something-th placegetter. But there's a reason we have
separate words for "truth", "honour" and "glory".

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moron4hire
This is how I've felt for a long time, but I think how a lot of PED apologists
argue is that they believe they have a right to interpret the rules as they
see fit, to find corner cases that the established rules do not cover and
exploit them to their advantage. They are letter-of-lawyers versus spirit-of-
lawyers.

Is "Moneyball" cheating? Is playing for overall points rather than wins
cheating (for series competitions, like racing)?

So when it comes to the drug issue, if the rules say "no testosterone levels
over a certain degree" rather than "no drugs", then the apologist would say
using drugs _is_ within the rules, if it doesn't raise testosterone levels
above that predetermined degree.

I don't agree, but it's difficult to say where one draws the line between
poorly written rules and cheating.

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jacques_chester
In the case of PEDs, there's no grey line. The WADA rules and lists are very
comprehensive, and include numerous catch-all clauses. You can determine what
you are forbidden to use, under which circumstances.

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LoSboccacc
My problem with doping isn't moral. Is that in pursuit of sponsors people will
literally kill their athletes, with or without their knowledge.

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mikeash
Exactly. It's like safety regulations in car racing. Racers get put into a
hard position where they have to choose between safety and winning, because
safety equipment costs weight and money that could be used to go faster.
Regulations eliminate that choice and allow people to compete while
maintaining some baseline level of safety.

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karmakaze
I was just thinking F1. Think of doping as part of the man-machine system and
regulations to limit all aspects of it. From developments at top levels of
competition we can get trickle-down chem-tech that is of benefit for all.

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jraines
_So in fact, it_ [clean sport] _is profoundly just what the Nazis would’ve
admired—the strongest, the fittest, the most beautiful._

self-Godwinning sophistry

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asimilator
Yeah, this is where I stopped reading. It's such a juvenile way to argue.

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basseq
Julian Savulescu has two arguments here:

1\. Cheaters are going to cheat, and you can't catch everyone, so just allow
cheating. ("So what the current system does is enable that, because it places
constraints that are impossible to enforce.")

This is a bullshit argument. If something's not completely enforceable (which
nothing is), then just forget it. Some people don't pay taxes: dissolve the
IRS. Some people commit murder: murder should be legal. You have to draw the
line somewhere. People will push or cross the line, you will catch some, and
life goes on.

2\. Doping in sports should be a test case for human enhancement.

This is a more reasonable argument. I'm not sure it's _right_ , but reasonable
people can discuss whether the intent of sport is "measuring personal
accomplishment" and "test-bed for medical intervention".

Note that a parallel argument is happening in Formula One: should teams be
given more leeway to build cars so innovation occurs as a result of
competition.

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humbleMouse
We could just start new sports leagues that allow doping. It would be
interesting to watch the NFL if people were bigger and angrier than they
already are.

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johnward
Are you suggesting that most professional leagues don't allow doping? The NFL
is full of drugs they just sweep it under the rug until the public notices.
Kind of like Professional Bodybuilding. Everyone knows they are on drugs but
we just kind of ignore it. It seems like even the DEA ignores it until you
make it so obvious they have to respond. I always finding it shocking when
people think pro athletes don't do as much as they can get away with to be
competitive.

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cromulent
I agree that it is similar to security theatre. The federations want to give
the impression that they are clean without the pain of declaring their star
athletes dirty. No-one has an interest in a failed test. They do have an
interest in appearing to be clean.

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MichaelGG
The bigger fallout from doping and WADA is the "drugs are bad" story it
pushes. This leads to things like "anti doping" in e-games. Or calling
students using mind-enhancing drugs cheaters. We should wholeheartedly embrace
people using medical technology to improve themselves, rather than being
slaves to genetics and limited by the money they have for exotic training
methods.

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brayton
The main issue I see is how do we allow adults to dope while keeping
children/teens away from it? Or would doping even increase with children/teens
if it were more widely acceptable amongst adults? When I was in high school
there were plenty of athletes using steroids - so already happening. Although
I do believe that number would increase especially within high schools.

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johnward
"Think of the children" is always the worst argument possible. This is about
education as with all drugs and not that stupid "roid rage" video they made me
watch with Ben Affleck
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FvlIwuQBO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FvlIwuQBO8)

There was an assumption that legal weed in Colorado would lead to more
children using but data suggest the opposite happened.
[http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/07/pot-use-
among...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/07/pot-use-among-
colorado-teens-appears-to-drop-after-legalization)

~~~
kmnc
Yeah, but honestly if doping was allowed in pro sports its a much strong
assumption that college and high school kids would dope more then if kids
would smoke more legal weed.

You cannot escape the reality that if doping is allowed then doping is
required.

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johnward
> but honestly if doping was allowed in pro sports its a much strong
> assumption that college and high school kids would dope more then if kids
> would smoke more legal weed.

No it's not.

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lazyant
As "Faster, Higher, Stronger..." author explains, doping wouldn't level the
field for everybody since drugs affect people very differently. The concept of
"fairness" is arbitrary, he mentions the use of altitude tents for example
(banned only in one country, it favours richer countries), but somewhere we
need to draw the line.

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johnward
There is no level playing field in genetics either. The idea that banning
drugs creates a level playing field is also flawed.

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kazinator
It's a simple information problem: identify who the dopers are and put them
into their own events, with separate record keeping. We can have a world
record for a 100 meter doped sprint, and one for the undoped sprints.

Already there are men's and women's separate records. In some sports there are
additional categories, like weight range. Also age groups.

Doping itself then isn't cheating, but rather competing, while doped, in an
undoped category. Analogous as a man pretending to be a woman.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
Why are musicians allowed (and maybe expected) to use performance enhancing
drugs, while athletes may not?

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function_seven
Because music isn't a competition. It's a creative endeavor.

~~~
kasey_junk
When musicians compete for positions in symphonies it is a competition.

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VOYD
the moral argument for cheating?

