181–190 of 197 posts
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What cheating are you referring to in professional cycling? I only know of all the doping... a blog like this would have no effect on that.
The water bottle thing. The sticky bottle. That's just one thing. I bet there's more.
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Maybe it's only me, but I don't see any "shame-fest" here. The article is facts based and points to concrete wrongdoings, not simply taking some moral stand. "what is ultimately a relatively trivial, presumably non-criminal misdeed." While it's not criminal behavior, it must be discouraged and punished as it does tremendous damage to competitive sports and other sportsmen by discouraging them ("What's the point? Ever…
It doesn't take a million strong Internet mob to punish an individual behavior. This bandwagon/mob/piling-on instinct may have served us well in the wild west or in small villages of a few dozen to few hundred people, but is highly inappropriate in the digital realm where the "village" consists of billions of people worldwide.
Regardless of the cheating, this type of post doesn't fully sit right with me. Given the permanence of record on the internet, this does bring up the issue of how we police bad behavior, and how we incorporate forgiveness into that. That said, the poster was pretty fair, and generally refer to her as "the runner". It definitely reads as an obsessive sleuthing, no doubt in part because there were follow-on discoveries…
I don't agree that it's innocent. Competitors in marathons (the ones that have a chance of winning especially) have put a lot of time, energy, effort, and pain into training to be successful. To have their rewards for that effort and commitment stolen by someone who didn't earn it is not fair and should be scrutinized and called out. To call this "trivial" seems like maybe you have no interest or experience with mara…
> To call this "trivial" seems like maybe you have no interest or experience with marathons? It might be trivial to you,...
I never used the word trivial in my comment. You've successfully made a straw man and beat it to death :)
I hope you don't mind if I take your double mis-reading of my comment to make a broader point: I think your reply is an unintentional but apt example of the righteousness that can get whipped up in these types of stories.
Righteousness does some messed up stuff to our thought process. It filters things in a way to amplify the negativity of the behavior in question, crowding out nuance in the quest to reinforce belief.
It looks like you latched onto the use of the word "innocent" and started your reply, and each follow-on sentence in your reply is your thought process reinforcing this emotion, which is increasingly divorced from the original post's point (how we police behavior in the age of the internet).
Sorry to make a bit of an example of your post, but I recognize it because I've done the very same thing myself - it's something we're all susceptible to. I think the environment of internet comment threads supercharges this, as threads gain steam because they're public and can have many more participants dropping in to make a point or build on something someone else said. There's often no feedback loop to this bottom-up aggregate behavior, which can outsize the real world effects (the 'punishment') relative to the person's offense.
This site [1] has a good summary of the emotional chain of causation for why we feel this way:
* Intuition focuses the mind on a single strategy. An angry person can only see the reasons for anger.
* Anger is an unconscious choice by the system. The whole body responds to the emotion.
* Indignation also gains its power from the territorial instincts.
* The amygdala triggers the anger emotion.
* LTP (long term potentiation) makes the amygdala sensitive to imagined offence.
* Self righteous indignation permits anger without guilt.
Within the context we're talking about, this is really instructive. There are examples that describe each one of these points. And the sum of many people's anger without guilt can be fearsome.
For what its worth, I'm in full agreement with you - it bothers me too seeing people cheat, or stolen valor, or any of these types of reprehensible behaviors. What I hope for is a society that polices bad behavior by giving appropriate punishment - where we find the right response that prevents future activity rather than simply seeking to satisfy our emotional desire for revenge. I worry internet shame posts may be more the latter than the former and may have terrible unintended consequences.
[1] http://www.effective-mind-control.com/self-righteous-indigna... (I have no idea about the rest of this site and cannot vouch for all of it, but this one page was pretty darn good)
Regardless of the cheating, this type of post doesn't fully sit right with me. Given the permanence of record on the internet, this does bring up the issue of how we police bad behavior, and how we incorporate forgiveness into that. That said, the poster was pretty fair, and generally refer to her as "the runner". It definitely reads as an obsessive sleuthing, no doubt in part because there were follow-on discoveries…
This runner cheated consciously, lied afterward, covered up the cheat with a conspiracy later (biking the route to create a fake data trail). Its hard to smear any investigation as 'obsessive' compared to that. And cheating at public events is not innocent. Its a rupture of the social contract, up there with stealing and libel. It should be dealt with promptly and vigorously. She should be banned from all further eve…
Also, 'relatively innocent' was meant in context of buying instagram followers, not in cheating.
> I'm more disturbed with the evident impulse to forgive. Is nothing important any more? Is character and honesty so worthless?
The thing I'm most disturbed by in these threads is how easily nuance is lost to the power of righteous indignation. It's like we're reading an entirely different set of comments.
For me the most interesting tidbit is that she biked the entire race afterwards in a cover up attempt. Are there any studies on doing something wrong and escalating it with coverup attempts? Or is there a name for this that I'm not aware of? I know it has to be the theme of at least one classical drama...sort of a reverse "Hans in Luck" of sorts...I dunno. I have witnessed this pattern before and the spiral that pers…
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You could say that about all sports competitions...
For non-professional sports I totally agree. It's a hobby.
The only benefit I can see is learning more about the human physique. But does that alone justify the scale and investment, or could that be had in cheaper ways?
Regardless of the cheating, this type of post doesn't fully sit right with me. Given the permanence of record on the internet, this does bring up the issue of how we police bad behavior, and how we incorporate forgiveness into that. That said, the poster was pretty fair, and generally refer to her as "the runner". It definitely reads as an obsessive sleuthing, no doubt in part because there were follow-on discoveries…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This runner cheated consciously, lied afterward, covered up the cheat with a conspiracy later (biking the route to create a fake data trail). Its hard to smear any investigation as 'obsessive' compared to that. And cheating at public events is not innocent. Its a rupture of the social contract, up there with stealing and libel. It should be dealt with promptly and vigorously. She should be banned from all further eve…
I didn't mean 'obsessive' as a smear, more that they were dogged in their pursuit, going as far as crunching biometrics and zooming in on a watch for evidence (enhance.. enhance.. [1]). It was an entertaining read since it looked eerily similar to how conspiracy sites construct their hilarious conclusions. And yet, it was real. Also, 'relatively innocent' was meant in context of buying instagram followers, not in che…
Cons are very skilled at manipulating the audience. They want exactly the reaction the 'forgive and forget' crowd are giving them.
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That seems like a kind of double-think. The race is important or it isn't; its meaningful to ban her or it isn't. If the race isn't that important, then 'banned for life' is a symbolic gesture only.
Other people are saying this in other ways in the thread, but the race is what someone makes of it. If what someone cares about is their place, and that's all that's important, I can see how what I wrote could be black and white. But for a lot of people, especially as the race distance gets longer unless one is on the podium one's place really doesn't matter for a race to be important, and it isn't worth caring much…
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Cheating and doping both make me very angry as a casual athlete. I don't let it ruin my day, but it annoys me. Like come on, we are training 10h a week to go pay money to run a race and get a $1 medal. Let's kinda sorta keep it fair?
That's an interesting perspective. I train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with a bunch of guys that are on steroids and it doesn't bother me a bit. In my mind I just handicap myself vs their strength advantage so I'm happy with my relative performance.