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Which is so silly. I would love to watch a sport where all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs and all the equipment is engineered t

Which is so silly. I would love to watch a sport where all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs and all the equipment is engineered to the very limits of nature. We draw oddly arbitrary lines what is and isn’t ok in sports.

rglullis 2y ago
> dangerously experimental PEDs Would you be willing to be the guinea pig?
- next_xibalba 2y ago
  No more than I'm willing to drive a race car 200+ mph (i.e. formula 1) nor step in a boxing ring and accumulate a bunch of micro-concussions. But I'll happily tune in for the many that would be willing to do it if the money was right. Why in the world would this have any bearing on the conversation? What point are you trying to make?
  - rglullis 2y ago
    Do you watch sports because of the chance of people dying from accidents and because you know they are risking themselves, or despite it? If the former, I regret to inform you: you are a psycopath. If the latter, then please go read some Nassim Taleb and refrain from opining on what is acceptable risks for others unless you yourself are willing to pay for the consequences.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Why would you ask someone reading HN that question? That's like asking a 'roided up athlete if they wanted to rewrite grep in Rust. Ask the athlete if they'd be willing to take PEDs if it would be allowed.
  - triceratops 2y ago
    You only need one athlete that's willing to. The others will have no choice after that. It's no different than asking if workers should be allowed to work without PPE.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      If workers want to work without PPE, then let them. Just ensure that they sign releases acknowledging that the PPE was made available to them and they chose of their own volition to not use it, and that by doing so they release everyone from any liability about what happens to them from not using the PPE.
      - triceratops 2y ago
        It's a slippery slope from there to "the children yearn for the mines".
        dylan604 2y ago
        You mean like deport those that do jobs that nobody else wants so we're not trying to lower the ages restrictions for those jobs? Not sure why the hypothetical slope is even necessary. We're doing it to ourselves
      - munificent 2y ago
        Foreman: "You want to work today, or go home and tell your family you're broke? No? Then sign the fucking form. We don't pay for PPE here."
      - liamwire 2y ago
        Your comments go to show either a concerning lack of thought towards second-order effects, or a disturbing lack of empathy towards your fellow humans.
        dylan604 2y ago
        If everyone else is using PPE, but you choose not to wear PPE, there's no empathy to be given. You may think the need for PPE is a hoax, but that's not anyone else's problem if there's a direct repercussion for your actions. The problem was not offered as your sibling comment as a forced decision. Some people choose to juice, others do not. That same logic applied to if you want to do it, here's the waiver to acknowledge it was your decision. I can feel sorry for someone's family for being related to a dunce, but no empathy is required on my part for the dunce.
nine_k 2y ago
That would be a great show, but hardly a fair competition. The spirit of fair competition (and thus ordering teams according to some predefined metric) is very important to most sports.
burkaman 2y ago
https://www.enhanced.com/ https://www.enhanced.com/
zappb 2y ago
Formula 1 is supposed to be like that except without the drugs. It’s a competition for both the racers and the manufacturers.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  It's not though. F1 introduced a cost cap to stop the top manufactures from being able to test and develop everything they want to.
  - creaturemachine 2y ago
    It's never been the same without the cigarette & booze sponsors.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Cost caps are about how you can cheat. You still develop and test everything you want in the lab. Those that turn out useful get told to the F1 team.
  - dagw 2y ago
    There's also a huge list of rules about things you're not allowed to do to make your car faster. F1 is quite far from simply building the fastest car, it's building the fastest car that adheres to this long list of 'arbitrary' rules and regulations.
- hibikir 2y ago
  This stopped being true a long time ago, as the best, fastest machines we could make were very deadly in an accident. If you know about F1, you know that Ayrton Senna, at the moment probably the best driver in the field, died on track. But people forget that he wasn't the only driver that died on that track that weekend: Roland Razemberger died in qualifying the day before! And one could argue that by then, they've already made significant changes to regulations to make the cars safer: Go see what happened when one of the old ground effect cars decided to lift off. F1's regulations are very strict and completely artificial, just not quite so strict as to allow only 1 car. This is both for safety and cost control. In Schumacher's days, why did ferrari dominate so much? Because they have a private circuit, a much larger budget than anyone, and the racers flew back to the factory to spend long day after long day of testing right next to where the parts where being manufactured. We'd not have a full grid if anyone had to compete with budgets like that
pinko 2y ago
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU
demosthanos 2y ago
The line isn't purely arbitrary, it's a reflection of the reality of what most people expect from sports: we want them to be a contest of human skill on the part of the athlete, not just the amount of money someone is willing to spend on the team. We also want underdogs to have a chance, which is very hard without some sort of limits. You could probably accomplish something similar by strictly capping spending per team to force people to do real engineering and optimize their play accordingly, but the result would be a very different sport that would appeal to a very different (and probably much smaller) audience. Formula One and Robot Wars come to mind.
- kevinventullo 2y ago
  On the discussion at hand, is there reason to believe this new bat shape will be too expensive for other teams to copy?
  - demosthanos 2y ago
    I don't know enough to know, but my guess would be no. I was thinking of the swimsuit bans—my understanding is that the banned swimsuits are extremely expensive and wear out extremely quickly.
- facile3232 2y ago
  > we want them to be a contest of human skill on the part of the athlete, not just the amount of money someone is willing to spend on the team This is simply not reflected very well in how professional sports are structured. If this were really a priority teams wouldn't be privately owned. It has extremely negative effects on each sport, easily dwarfing the influence of performance enhancing drugs. Anyway, I would absolutely love to see what the human body is capable of. To me, hearing a ban of performance enhancing drugs is a guarantee of a more boring and less competitive game. I understand the impetus of protecting children, but we're already buying and selling humans. How good of an influence was this to begin with?
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
mjevans 2y ago
I wouldn't mind custom _diets_ (of normal food) and custom fabricated swim gear... provided the teams all had access to the same training tools before hand. Custom drugs seem like a step too far IMO. As far as the suits go that's to level out body shapes as an issue.
impossiblefork 2y ago
But it wouldn't be fun. It wouldn't be a good sport to participate. It would just be blood entertainment for the viewers. Sports should be for those doing them, and then if people end up caring and commercial competitions end up viable, then that's a bonus but we shouldn't design them for entertainment of the audience. Customization of equipment should always be fine unless it increases injury risk or completely destroys the game.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Professional sports are all about entertaining the fans. If they can live a gladiator's life and ask "are you not entertained" and want to die in the lions den, then might as well let them. Amateur sports like colleges or olympics could continue to have the traditional rules to keep things "competitive", but might as well let the pro-sports just go full tilt.
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    If it's really about entertainment, then it has no appeal. Then you end up with professional wrestling. Professional sports are interesting because there's something fundamental, something challenging where someone's skill can shine.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      > If it's really about entertainment, then it has no appeal. Then you end up with professional wrestling. Do you not see the contradiction here? Professional wrestling is huge. It has very loyal fans. The fans pay for pay-per-view and live event sales. They buy merch. Nobody attends a WWE event expecting Greco-Roman style wrestling. They all know exactly what they are getting.
      - impossiblefork 2y ago
        Only among certain kinds of people. But a European PM doesn't go watch professional wrestling, but if his country is doing well enough in association football and there's nothing incredibly important going on he will go to the match. This is because winning in this game is seen as an achievement, and a natural and reasonable achievement-- after all, there are many world records that nobody cares about.
tshaddox 2y ago
I mean, the "arbitrary" lines are what makes a sport what it is. The reason that you can't pick up the ball and run with it in football (soccer) isn't because they arbitrarily banned this "optimization" after some brilliant coach invented it.
mb7733 2y ago
Part of the problem is that it trickles down and affects sport at lower levels. I was an age group swimmer (ages 10-18) when those suits came out. I can't remember exactly but it at least 10x'd the minimal equipment budget for the season. The suits were not only much more expensive but they wore out after a small number of races. Suddenly a line was draw between have- and have-nots based on whose parents could and would buy this stuff. (My club, like many, practiced in a small municipal pool and it was very budget friendly. The fancy suits would be a large fraction of the annual cost to a family.) In my opinion banning the suits was great for the sport at the age-group level, and thus the sport in general.
triceratops 2y ago
> Which is so silly. I would love to watch a sport where all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs It's called worker safety.
tayo42 2y ago
> dangerously experimental PEDs Brazilian jiu-jitsu /submission grappling is like this right now The biggest events don't test. That's adcc and ibjjf tournaments only test the winners of black and belt and they can skip the testing somehow Personally I think it's bad for the sport and hobby. Downstream effects where it normalizes ped use for hobbyist tournaments and delusional parents have their kids on steroids and try. The best don't win neccesarily, just who handles the drugs the best
- umbra07 2y ago
  why do you think they're on dangerously experimental PEDs as opposed to the standard PED profile in combat sports?
dagw 2y ago
all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs The problem here is of course that you probably won't get the best athletes in the world to sign up for that. So you'd be watching desperate and quite mediocre athletes who feel they have literally no other option in life.
DrFalkyn 2y ago
It’s called bodybuilding
nkrisc 2y ago
> We draw oddly arbitrary lines what is and isn’t ok in sports. Are you suggesting the rules of sports are a natural property of the universe? It’s all completely arbitrary. That’s kind of the point: we watch people perform these arbitrary tasks and then we celebrate.

rglullis 2y ago

> dangerously experimental PEDs Would you be willing to be the guinea pig?

next_xibalba 2y ago
No more than I'm willing to drive a race car 200+ mph (i.e. formula 1) nor step in a boxing ring and accumulate a bunch of micro-concussions. But I'll happily tune in for the many that would be willing to do it if the money was right. Why in the world would this have any bearing on the conversation? What point are you trying to make?
- rglullis 2y ago
  Do you watch sports because of the chance of people dying from accidents and because you know they are risking themselves, or despite it? If the former, I regret to inform you: you are a psycopath. If the latter, then please go read some Nassim Taleb and refrain from opining on what is acceptable risks for others unless you yourself are willing to pay for the consequences.
dylan604 2y ago
Why would you ask someone reading HN that question? That's like asking a 'roided up athlete if they wanted to rewrite grep in Rust. Ask the athlete if they'd be willing to take PEDs if it would be allowed.
- triceratops 2y ago
  You only need one athlete that's willing to. The others will have no choice after that. It's no different than asking if workers should be allowed to work without PPE.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    If workers want to work without PPE, then let them. Just ensure that they sign releases acknowledging that the PPE was made available to them and they chose of their own volition to not use it, and that by doing so they release everyone from any liability about what happens to them from not using the PPE.
    - triceratops 2y ago
      It's a slippery slope from there to "the children yearn for the mines".
      - dylan604 2y ago
        You mean like deport those that do jobs that nobody else wants so we're not trying to lower the ages restrictions for those jobs? Not sure why the hypothetical slope is even necessary. We're doing it to ourselves
    - munificent 2y ago
      Foreman: "You want to work today, or go home and tell your family you're broke? No? Then sign the fucking form. We don't pay for PPE here."
    - liamwire 2y ago
      Your comments go to show either a concerning lack of thought towards second-order effects, or a disturbing lack of empathy towards your fellow humans.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        If everyone else is using PPE, but you choose not to wear PPE, there's no empathy to be given. You may think the need for PPE is a hoax, but that's not anyone else's problem if there's a direct repercussion for your actions. The problem was not offered as your sibling comment as a forced decision. Some people choose to juice, others do not. That same logic applied to if you want to do it, here's the waiver to acknowledge it was your decision. I can feel sorry for someone's family for being related to a dunce, but no empathy is required on my part for the dunce.

nine_k 2y ago

That would be a great show, but hardly a fair competition. The spirit of fair competition (and thus ordering teams according to some predefined metric) is very important to most sports.

burkaman 2y ago

https://www.enhanced.com/ https://www.enhanced.com/

zappb 2y ago

Formula 1 is supposed to be like that except without the drugs. It’s a competition for both the racers and the manufacturers.

lesuorac 2y ago
It's not though. F1 introduced a cost cap to stop the top manufactures from being able to test and develop everything they want to.
- creaturemachine 2y ago
  It's never been the same without the cigarette & booze sponsors.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Cost caps are about how you can cheat. You still develop and test everything you want in the lab. Those that turn out useful get told to the F1 team.
- dagw 2y ago
  There's also a huge list of rules about things you're not allowed to do to make your car faster. F1 is quite far from simply building the fastest car, it's building the fastest car that adheres to this long list of 'arbitrary' rules and regulations.
hibikir 2y ago
This stopped being true a long time ago, as the best, fastest machines we could make were very deadly in an accident. If you know about F1, you know that Ayrton Senna, at the moment probably the best driver in the field, died on track. But people forget that he wasn't the only driver that died on that track that weekend: Roland Razemberger died in qualifying the day before! And one could argue that by then, they've already made significant changes to regulations to make the cars safer: Go see what happened when one of the old ground effect cars decided to lift off. F1's regulations are very strict and completely artificial, just not quite so strict as to allow only 1 car. This is both for safety and cost control. In Schumacher's days, why did ferrari dominate so much? Because they have a private circuit, a much larger budget than anyone, and the racers flew back to the factory to spend long day after long day of testing right next to where the parts where being manufactured. We'd not have a full grid if anyone had to compete with budgets like that

pinko 2y ago

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

demosthanos 2y ago

The line isn't purely arbitrary, it's a reflection of the reality of what most people expect from sports: we want them to be a contest of human skill on the part of the athlete, not just the amount of money someone is willing to spend on the team. We also want underdogs to have a chance, which is very hard without some sort of limits. You could probably accomplish something similar by strictly capping spending per team to force people to do real engineering and optimize their play accordingly, but the result would be a very different sport that would appeal to a very different (and probably much smaller) audience. Formula One and Robot Wars come to mind.

kevinventullo 2y ago
On the discussion at hand, is there reason to believe this new bat shape will be too expensive for other teams to copy?
- demosthanos 2y ago
  I don't know enough to know, but my guess would be no. I was thinking of the swimsuit bans—my understanding is that the banned swimsuits are extremely expensive and wear out extremely quickly.
facile3232 2y ago
> we want them to be a contest of human skill on the part of the athlete, not just the amount of money someone is willing to spend on the team This is simply not reflected very well in how professional sports are structured. If this were really a priority teams wouldn't be privately owned. It has extremely negative effects on each sport, easily dwarfing the influence of performance enhancing drugs. Anyway, I would absolutely love to see what the human body is capable of. To me, hearing a ban of performance enhancing drugs is a guarantee of a more boring and less competitive game. I understand the impetus of protecting children, but we're already buying and selling humans. How good of an influence was this to begin with?
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago

mjevans 2y ago

I wouldn't mind custom _diets_ (of normal food) and custom fabricated swim gear... provided the teams all had access to the same training tools before hand. Custom drugs seem like a step too far IMO. As far as the suits go that's to level out body shapes as an issue.

impossiblefork 2y ago

But it wouldn't be fun. It wouldn't be a good sport to participate. It would just be blood entertainment for the viewers. Sports should be for those doing them, and then if people end up caring and commercial competitions end up viable, then that's a bonus but we shouldn't design them for entertainment of the audience. Customization of equipment should always be fine unless it increases injury risk or completely destroys the game.

dylan604 2y ago
Professional sports are all about entertaining the fans. If they can live a gladiator's life and ask "are you not entertained" and want to die in the lions den, then might as well let them. Amateur sports like colleges or olympics could continue to have the traditional rules to keep things "competitive", but might as well let the pro-sports just go full tilt.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  If it's really about entertainment, then it has no appeal. Then you end up with professional wrestling. Professional sports are interesting because there's something fundamental, something challenging where someone's skill can shine.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > If it's really about entertainment, then it has no appeal. Then you end up with professional wrestling. Do you not see the contradiction here? Professional wrestling is huge. It has very loyal fans. The fans pay for pay-per-view and live event sales. They buy merch. Nobody attends a WWE event expecting Greco-Roman style wrestling. They all know exactly what they are getting.
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      Only among certain kinds of people. But a European PM doesn't go watch professional wrestling, but if his country is doing well enough in association football and there's nothing incredibly important going on he will go to the match. This is because winning in this game is seen as an achievement, and a natural and reasonable achievement-- after all, there are many world records that nobody cares about.

tshaddox 2y ago

I mean, the "arbitrary" lines are what makes a sport what it is. The reason that you can't pick up the ball and run with it in football (soccer) isn't because they arbitrarily banned this "optimization" after some brilliant coach invented it.

mb7733 2y ago

Part of the problem is that it trickles down and affects sport at lower levels. I was an age group swimmer (ages 10-18) when those suits came out. I can't remember exactly but it at least 10x'd the minimal equipment budget for the season. The suits were not only much more expensive but they wore out after a small number of races. Suddenly a line was draw between have- and have-nots based on whose parents could and would buy this stuff. (My club, like many, practiced in a small municipal pool and it was very budget friendly. The fancy suits would be a large fraction of the annual cost to a family.) In my opinion banning the suits was great for the sport at the age-group level, and thus the sport in general.

triceratops 2y ago

> Which is so silly. I would love to watch a sport where all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs It's called worker safety.

tayo42 2y ago

> dangerously experimental PEDs Brazilian jiu-jitsu /submission grappling is like this right now The biggest events don't test. That's adcc and ibjjf tournaments only test the winners of black and belt and they can skip the testing somehow Personally I think it's bad for the sport and hobby. Downstream effects where it normalizes ped use for hobbyist tournaments and delusional parents have their kids on steroids and try. The best don't win neccesarily, just who handles the drugs the best

umbra07 2y ago
why do you think they're on dangerously experimental PEDs as opposed to the standard PED profile in combat sports?

dagw 2y ago

all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs The problem here is of course that you probably won't get the best athletes in the world to sign up for that. So you'd be watching desperate and quite mediocre athletes who feel they have literally no other option in life.

DrFalkyn 2y ago

It’s called bodybuilding

nkrisc 2y ago

> We draw oddly arbitrary lines what is and isn’t ok in sports. Are you suggesting the rules of sports are a natural property of the universe? It’s all completely arbitrary. That’s kind of the point: we watch people perform these arbitrary tasks and then we celebrate.