Not sure why this is on hacker news, other than the fact that an epic athlete will be stripped of his honor and have an asterisk next to his name. In the footnotes it will say, "See Barry Bonds"
But his excellence and story is what we all pay to see. We don't really want to know. And who's to say those that receive Armstrong's awards weren't doping, too? Not trying to dismiss the situation, but PEDs are absolutely saturating ALL of sports today, no exceptions.
We spend our lives devising novel, elegant optimizations to complex systems and we call this hacking. Most people partake in novel, powerful biological augmentation and we call this medicine. Interestingly, in the realm of competitive, physical human achievement we call it cheating.
Consider that as computing becomes more ubiquitous and personal, as technology merges with medicine, as we move past augmented reality and pacemakers into the cybernetic age of the next 50 years, this is very much the future of hacking.
From the opposite side, consider how storage could soon be DNA, computation could soon be artificial neurons, and how computer vision could be lab-grown retinas. Still not seeing the convergence?
By the end of our lifetimes, the business of bio-ethics and optimization will become very, very relevant.
It's similar to what we said when MJ died: we feel a kinship of spirit with someone who hacked. Instead of hacking technology, he hacked himself. And there's a certain question about how far you'll go to pursue perfection.
I hold out hope that Armstrong will be exonerated by history, since he's chosen not to do it himself. I wish we were all upvoting his response, which is much better.
No matter what the truth, I can sure as hell imagine anyone would get sick of literally being bled dry by bureaucrats and the media for well over a decade (not to mention, after losing a ball).
At the end of it all, at least we got what was possibly the best sentiment from a sports advert ever:
"Today I turn the page. I will no longer address this issue, regardless of the circumstances. I will commit myself to the work I began before ever winning a single Tour de France title: serving people and families affected by cancer, especially those in underserved communities. [...] We have a lot of work to do and I'm looking forward to an end to this pointless distraction. I have a responsibility to all those who have stepped forward to devote their time and energy to the cancer cause. I will not stop fighting for that mission. Going forward, I am going to devote myself to raising my five beautiful (and energetic) kids, fighting cancer, and attempting to be the fittest 40-year old on the planet."
Sounds like a damn better use of time than defending yourself against fiasco to me.
