5 ms·
author cheats, thinks it works, roots for cheaters
by jackmott 9y ago
author cheats, thinks it works, roots for cheaters
- greekyogurt21 9y agoLol. OP thinks professional athletes don't dope.
- aetherson 9y agoPlease describe your feelings on athletes wearing contact lenses. How about athletes who have ever had a surgery? What about athletes who are, at the time of competition, using non-prescription antihistamines? How about pseudoephedrine?
- praneshp 9y agoSimple. Look up what the WTA/<insert authority of sport you play> regulations ban; everything else is fine.
- taeric 9y agoI think the argument was to build a logical rationale for this. Appeal to authority is somewhat weak, in that regard.
- rocqua 9y agoI think OP tried to make the point that anyone participating in a competition should stick to the rules of that competition. That doesn't preclude discussion about whether those rules make sense, but "Yes, I broke the rules to get an advantage, but the rule really shouldn't be there because of these reasons" is never a good defence. It might help to further the cause of rule change, but it never makes a result from cheating fair.
- taeric 9y agoRight, I took that too. I took the post they were responding to as a request to build a logical rationale.
- praneshp 9y agoI'm not trying to appeal to authority. When you play a WTA tournament, it's only fair that you have to abide by their rules. Playing tennis, or playing in another tour that doesn't ban your drug of choice shouldn't be banned. This has nothing to do with my opinion on general drug use, which I agree has been demonized.
- taeric 9y agoIt was pretty clear that the post you responded to is looking for "why has the governing body chosen this particular set of rules." Otherwise, it is a pretty boring discussion. Yes, the authority on whether or not this substance is banned has (or has not) banned this substance. :)
- TylerE 9y agoDrugs are bad. Why? Because they're illegal. Why are they illegal? Because they're bad.
- praneshp 9y agoWho said drugs are bad? I'm pretty sure they are great, from the vast literature out here.
- baddox 9y agoTo be fair, the original commenter only mentioned "cheating," not "bad." It's pretty reasonably to claim that using drugs that are banned by the governing body of your sport qualifies as cheating.
- tristor 9y agoHelp, help, I'm stuck in a tautology factory.
- aetherson 9y agoCool. The authority of the sport that the author played was the USTA, not the WTA. The author says, "For the record, meldonium is not illegal (or “scheduled”) in America, nor is it banned specifically by the USTA." I presume you have now 100% flipped your opinion on whether the author cheated, based on your not having read the article carefully.
- praneshp 9y agoOh I don't think the author cheated, at all. My takeaway from the article was that he felt good on moldonium, and played in a(n?) USTA tournament where it isn't banned. I thought your contact lenses nonsense was about your OPs 'roots for cheaters' Edit: Thinking back, I think I'll support Sharapova too, but there is no question in my mind that she was on illegal (acc to WTA) drugs for 26 days.
- matt4077 9y agoIt's pretty obvious, isn't it? If something is used as treatment for a pathology it's not doping. Besides, the difficulty to define something so as to cover any potential eventuality is a fallacy: -100degF is cold, 200degF is hot, and saying that any line we might draw as a cutoff for hotness is arbitrary in no way challenges the concept of heat itself.
- aetherson 9y agoIt doesn't "challenge the concept of heat," but it does make pretty ridiculous a line on one side of which is "hot" and on another side of which is "cold" and "cold" is bad and wrong and immoral and "hot" is awesome. (And "pathology" has all the same bright-line-distinction problems that performance-enhancing-substances do, so your proposal to clear up the problem actually makes things even less clear.)
- matt4077 9y agoNobody is saying that one side of that divide is uniformly "bad" and the other is "awesome". There's obviously no "morally awesome" in doping–only "not doping". And nobody is denying that there is a grey area. But the existence of a grey area doesn't mean that the extremes don't exist. To try another example: within the infinity of possible human actions, you can probably find something for every nuanced level of morality from "saving a hundred babies" all the way to genocide, with parking in a handicapped spot slightly on the "bad" side of average, and "looking at the watch" somewhere really close to neutral. But just because we can't always draw a bright line between "good" and "bad" actions doesn't mean we should abolish all criminal law, does it?
- aetherson 9y agoYou're trying very hard to create analogies to explain something that I already understand, have said I understood, and don't disagree with you on. And if this article were about someone taking a shit-ton of steroids and attaching a cybernetic device that super-oxygenated her blood during the match, then we could reasonably say that it doesn't matter where the line is, she's way over it.
- matz1 9y agoIt's cheats only if you get caught.
- r00fus 9y agoAccording to the coach of my middle-school friend (anecdotally, possible apocryphally), "if you're not cheating, you're not trying". Was a shocking concept to me at the time that people thought that.
- danielharrison 9y agoThe author did not cheat.