Why are musicians allowed (and maybe expected) to use performance enhancing drugs, while athletes may not?
Because music isn't a competition. It's a creative endeavor.
It's not as if sports don't demand creativity.
The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#22I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies. I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that athletes play in the lives of children and teenage…
I don't buy the 'think of the children!' argument for a second. If a person wants to use, they're going to use, regardless of what drug or their age. What really causes problems is all the lies, misinformation, and unrealistic expectations about what they can achieve with or without drugs. People think that the drugs are magic and will close the gaps in their training. It really is all about training- as the article says, the drugs are used because the human body isn't able to recover quickly enough from the volume of training required of professional athletes; in most sports it has nothing to do with adding more muscle. In fact most athletes don't want to add muscle willy-nilly because it makes it harder to move. If professional athletes were able to honestly discuss the drugs that they use and their dosages I think it would make things safer for young athletes, because most people don't understand how low the dosages that they take are and it would PROVE that you can't replace hard training with drugs. There are young athletes now taking dosages that far exceed what even world class athletes would consider because there's no honest discussion around them, they can't make informed decisions.
Tl;dr: Hiding information never makes people safer. If Barry Bonds published his training program and drug stack, nobody would ever be stupid enough to think that "I can get to where Barry Bonds is by using steroids"; instead it would prove that the only way to compete with Barry Bonds is to train your ass off.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#23I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies. I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that athletes play in the lives of children and teenage…
Certainly influence on the young is part of it, but it's also a matter of keeping the sport at a level that everybody agrees to and understands. In some sports, doping is accepted- there are separate leagues for natural athletes. So my only issue is that if everybody agreed to not dope, and the understanding is that the athletes are clean, yet some dope, then those who are doping are cheating.
If everybody agrees that doping is ok, and it is the understanding of the participants that to compete you have to dope, then I'm fine with it.
To me, it's really about your relationship to the other competitors more than the horrors your actions may inflict on society.
We see something similar in academia. There are performance-enhancing drugs that academics can take to have greater periods of intense work, and out-compete their competitors. It's up to the academics to set the standard for what is acceptable.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#24the moral argument for cheating?
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#25The main issue I see is how do we allow adults to dope while keeping children/teens away from it? Or would doping even increase with children/teens if it were more widely acceptable amongst adults? When I was in high school there were plenty of athletes using steroids - so already happening. Although I do believe that number would increase especially within high schools.
"Think of the children" is always the worst argument possible. This is about education as with all drugs and not that stupid "roid rage" video they made me watch with Ben Affleck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FvlIwuQBO8
There was an assumption that legal weed in Colorado would lead to more children using but data suggest the opposite happened. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/07/pot-use-among...
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#26As "Faster, Higher, Stronger..." author explains, doping wouldn't level the field for everybody since drugs affect people very differently. The concept of "fairness" is arbitrary, he mentions the use of altitude tents for example (banned only in one country, it favours richer countries), but somewhere we need to draw the line.
There is no level playing field in genetics either. The idea that banning drugs creates a level playing field is also flawed.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#27We could just start new sports leagues that allow doping. It would be interesting to watch the NFL if people were bigger and angrier than they already are.
Are you suggesting that most professional leagues don't allow doping? The NFL is full of drugs they just sweep it under the rug until the public notices. Kind of like Professional Bodybuilding. Everyone knows they are on drugs but we just kind of ignore it. It seems like even the DEA ignores it until you make it so obvious they have to respond. I always finding it shocking when people think pro athletes don't do as much as they can get away with to be competitive.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#28Why are musicians allowed (and maybe expected) to use performance enhancing drugs, while athletes may not?
Because music isn't a competition. It's a creative endeavor.
Life is a competition. There is definitely competition in music. People battle for spots in orchestras. People battle for commercial dollars, etc.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#29Why are musicians allowed (and maybe expected) to use performance enhancing drugs, while athletes may not?
People in all sorts of different positions take performance enhancing drugs. We as a society tend to focus on athletes for some reason. How many of the programmers you work with are taking some kind of stimulant or nootropic? Everyone is looking for an edge. How many famous CEOS "cheated" at some point to get to where they are?
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#30So in fact, it [clean sport] is profoundly just what the Nazis would’ve admired—the strongest, the fittest, the most beautiful. self-Godwinning sophistry
Yeah, this is where I stopped reading. It's such a juvenile way to argue.