From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Fri May 31 2002 - 12:18:40 MDT
Spike writes:
> I really dont see the problem with the whole notion of
> performance enhancement for professional athletes. Office
> workers have been using caffiene as a performance
> enhancement drug since offices were first invented. I myself
> consider the performance enhancement of caffiene as a
> side effect, since I am primarily using it as a treatment
> for oversized genitals. (Hey! Its a miracle! Im cured!)
One of the reasons for disallowing performance enhancements is because
athletes might then be (more) driven to self-destructive behavior in
order to succeed. They would have to use more and more experimental and
potentially damaging treatments just to stay competitive. You see this
already with steroids, which many insiders agree are much more widely
used than is publicly admitted. Look at body building as an extreme
example. These people will pay a price later for misuse of their bodies.
By disallowing steroids and similar drugs, the sport remains just as
competitive but no one has to harm themselves in this way. It's kind of
a prisoner's dilemma situation, where any given person has an advantage
if he's the only person using the drugs, but if everyone uses them,
then everyone is worse off.
In the long run it's going to get harder and harder to distinguish
enhanced bodies from normal ones. Already with some of the blood doping
using your own cells, it's almost impossible to detect. Most people
I know who follow the support believe it goes without saying that Lance
Armstrong and other top competitive bicyclists use these treatments, which
are illegal. As technology improves there will be more such enhancements.
What about using gene treatments to improve the functionality of your
organs? Or even genetic engineering of embryos?
Eventually, a human being might be born with bones with the strength of
diamond, and mechanical respirocytes able to carry hundreds of times as
much oxygen as normal blood. Obviously there will be no way to compare
the performance of such an individual with 20th century humans.
> As for the sanctity of old batting averages, I have an
> idea there too. We can make two separate record
> books. The old records can be treated as kind of
> like the special olympics, or the records for the
> handicapped, or the technology challenged. This
> will discourage direct comparison of present and future
> athletes, against which the old time superheros would
> appear to suck. spike
Right, this is similar to how in body building they have drug-free and
non-drug-free competitions. The use of steroids is such an open secret
there that the two classes of competitions exist openly.
Hal
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