from Hacker News

The Enhanced Game – Sports, without drug testing

by xvirk on 10/18/23, 9:49 PM with 59 comments

• by mpsprd on 10/18/23, 10:12 PM

  This website ignores the big problem with enhancement medication: the health of participants.

  A future where there is an incentive to juice up athletes as much as possible is a recipe for disaster.

• by jtorsella on 10/18/23, 10:53 PM

  This is very transparently a gross, cruel attempt to parody and belittle trans people, as is made clear by the people involved and the language:

  “7 Tips on How To Come Out as Enhanced”

  And the “believe the science” and “colonialist” bits are very much a conservative-doing-an-impression-of-a-liberal thing.

  There’s worse if you read through their mission pages. I’m taken aback by the level of effort, honestly. It really astounds me how much money and effort there is behind ostracizing already marginalized people. It’s disgusting.

• by codeulike on 10/18/23, 10:17 PM

  SNL, All Drug Olympics (1988)

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU

  Addresses the main problem with this approach.

• by hettygreen on 10/18/23, 10:58 PM

  Why is the website so.. propaganda-ey?

  It sounds like they're casting atheletes who willingly take banned substances as a persecuted minority group that we need to stand united for, on par with the fight for LGBT rights or something. It's all super-defensive, like it was started by a few atheletes that got caught. The section called "Science is Real" tries to cast anti-doping as anti-science.

  Watch one of those documentaries on Lance Armstrong. Getting blood transfusions in the back of a van doesn't look fun.

  But I'm all for it. Why stop at substances? Use CRISPR to give a swimmer some webbed-feet.

• by andybak on 10/18/23, 10:26 PM

  I was intially convinced this was an art project or a hoax...

  The people on the team page seem to exist. But I'm still not entirely convinced there's not something else going on here.

• by nonameiguess on 10/18/23, 10:13 PM

  I agree with the basic moral principle of this and think it's a fine idea in theory, but how are you going to get any of the best athletes to participate? The only realistic route to doing something like that is the LIV thing using Saudi Oil money to just flat-out pay ungodly money to the point you overcome the natural competitive spirit that tends to motivate athletes and they're willing to be blacklisted from the actual top leagues.

  Fundamentally, the problem here isn't with the sports organizations themselves. It's with the countries they're in. Steroid use is illegal in most of the world. If you achieve any level of success worth paying attention to, some legislature, law enforcement body, or both will come try to shut you down. Even the IFBB has to pretend to drug test, as obviously bullshit and easy to beat as it is. Are you only ever going to host games in Mexico?

• by ZephyrOhm on 10/19/23, 12:27 AM

  The majority of top level athletes are doping and not getting caught. You're delusional if you believe otherwise. There are even approved medical doping practices in sports, where athletes are given legal consent to use steroids and PEDs. As an example, note the uptick in football (soccer) players being asthmatic? Why? Because the asthma medications increase performance on the field. It's everywhere! Those that believe athletes aren't cheating are only people not involved in sports and unaware of the realities it takes to achieve those levels of performance. If you're not doping, you're not winning, whether it's drug tested or not. There's literally drug test avoidance coaches all over. Entire industries for it. Common knowledge isn't the same as truth.

• by esquivalience on 10/18/23, 10:14 PM

  This seems hypocritical to me. I kind of get it as a way to level the playing field in one sense (though not, I expect, in many other senses). But their "inclusive language" guide is not internally consistent, and in fact breaks down in the first two paragraphs:

  It kicks off saying "Being enhanced isn’t a preference or a lifestyle choice." - but it immediately proceeds to contradict that by emphasising choice: "When we talk about science and being enhanced, we’re not talking about preferences or choices or value judgments" and "Inclusive language is a way of acknowledging and respecting the complete control and autonomy people have over their bodies."

  So... Yeah. It really does seem to be a choice.

• by DaiPlusPlus on 10/18/23, 10:10 PM

  When atheles start collapsing of heart-failure on the track, then what?

• by FigurativeVoid on 10/18/23, 10:12 PM

  I understand the reasoning as to why the Olympics are "drug-free," but I have never really understood the other side of the argument.

  Sports have improved in all sorts of ways. We have better training methods. We have better equipment. We have better medicine.

  While I'm not sure I'd try it, I would love to see the limits of human ability with PEDs. I'd be willing to bet that some of those drugs would translate well to medicine for non-elite athletes.

• by nradov on 10/18/23, 10:57 PM

  Not sure if serious or satire. But anyway, moral and legal issues aside this will never achieve mainstream success. Major sponsors and advertisers won't want to be associated with it due to the negative impact on their brand images. And modern sports only works as a business with that financial support. Can you imagine Adidas or Toyota putting their logo on this shitshow?

• by romafirst3 on 10/18/23, 11:35 PM

  Pretty sure this is a hoax/satire/anti-trans argument.

  So, going to just answer the anti trans piece.

  There is no trans athletes dominating sport. Even us talking about it is because conservatives want to use it as a wedge issue.

  For the mathematically inclined, slightly under 1% of the population are trans. When we see more than 1% of winners of athletic competitions being trans then we can talk about a problem. At the moment there just aren’t any trans athletes as the best in the world in their sport so it just isn’t an issue.

  I honestly think unless you are trans yourself you really should not have an opinion about trans people.

• by zingababba on 10/19/23, 2:38 PM

  I suggest watching this video, it's pretty good - https://youtu.be/HQLweuRSD9M (Why I'm Against Anti-Doping) - made by Clarence Kennedy, an enhanced vegan olympic weight-lifter that puts up insane numbers.

  I've been enhanced myself for something like 15 years now and I gotta say, it's always funny to me how blind people are to the fact that athletes are going to take stuff, period.

• by janalsncm on 10/18/23, 10:45 PM

  I talked with my semi-pro baseball player friend about this. What if there were no restrictions about steroids?

  He told me about his friend’s roommate who used steroids. 99% of the time he was nice, but steroids gave him major temper issues.

  So I don’t think the only question is whether we can optimize athletic ability. The question is what the cost of doing that is. The cost not just to athletes but to those around them.

• by rmbyrro on 10/18/23, 10:37 PM

  We live in strange times.

  Those working to keep chemical cheating away from honest sport competition are the ones called corrupt.

• by meatjuice on 10/19/23, 3:34 AM

  Japanese government bought IOC for Olympic to be held in Tokyo. This kind of thing should never happen again.

• by rmbyrro on 10/18/23, 10:39 PM

  Following this trend, Hans Nieman may well create an "Enhanced Chess" organization

• by roughly on 10/18/23, 10:47 PM

  We really don't have a concept of "society" anymore, do we?