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Spot on. I have heard it explained like this ( by Smeets, a Dutch reporter, whom I dislike ) :

My recollection:

"The riders define 'doping' as going over the limit of detection. They all use 'forbidden' substances but below the limits. That is why they can say with a straight face on TV they are 'absolutely clean'. And two weeks later be caught because of a dosing mistake."

Lance is a great athlete but he also took doping to the next level with many blood transfusions and pressure on his teammates to dope as well.

I am not defending Lance here, I have no opinion on athletes in general.

But you are missing the point: their point of view becomes quite reasonable when you are considering naturally occurring differences like oxygen levels or what not.

> Rules in society are also pretty stupid.

I believe the contrary: the rules (do not kill, do not steal, pay your taxes etc.) are the thing that prevents society from breaking down. There are examples of states which were too weak to enforce these rules and consequently got eradicated from the map.

You talked about the breakdown of society in your first sentence, and then the collapse of states in the second. Of course it's in the interests of states to conflate the two. But as states rise and fall, the people suffer and endure, and wherever there is disorder, there are still people, and wherever there is discontinuity of rulership, there is continuity of family, culture, and tradition. Revolutions and conquest can sweep time and time again over the people, but they persist. There are still folk cultural beliefs in places like Iraq, where the people have been conquered and reconquered time and time again, states failing, states rising like waves, that have a murky line of continuity back to Babylon and before.

It is true that a state cannot exist without asserting its exclusive right to violent means, but it is pure propaganda that society fails without a state. It is certainly true that wherever states fail, others come like vultures to pick apart the corpse. States, being supremely violent entities with the assent of billions behind them, make their own reality true. It is not the absence of a state that brings the breakdown of society, but the competition between states to fill power vacuums: would be warlords who would aim to be the next state. It is a ransom: submit to a ruler or we will inflict suffering on you. Choose one oppressor, or be sieged by many.

> (...)it is pure propaganda that society fails without a state. It is certainly true that wherever states fail, others come like vultures to pick apart the corpse.

I basically agree with that, with the caveat that there will always be organisations which try to live off other people's work, and you could do FAR worse than modern western states.

On one hand, yes, I think you can say that to be a winner, you had to dope. But if you took all of the dopers out, we would still have a winner.

Consider Cadel Evans. In my opinion, I don't think he doped. He was always in the conversation with Vinokourav, Ullrich, and the other top guys. For years.

He eventually won, but the sport was much cleaner by then.

I was a huge Armstrong fan. When I heard that Hincapie admitted to doping, I knew it was over. Over because Hincapie was always Lance's right-hand man, and also over because Armstrong wouldn't go after Hincapie.

I think Armstrong was one of the best cyclists ever, but he is tarnished now just like the others. It's a cruel sport.

Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1173/

You can get better a lot of ways in sport. Why is performance-enhancing drugs the way that is singled out as not acceptable?

I don't know a ton about this stuff, but:

Isn't it because things like steroids are dangerous and have serious adverse effects, and athletes shouldn't have to endanger themselves in that way, just to stay relevant.

There are thousands of rules in any sport, anti-doping is just on of them. Anyone trying to get around the rules is just cheating, so why should doping be excused?

> Anyone trying to get around the rules is just cheating, so why should doping be excused?

Perhaps a better question is: why are there rules against doping in the first place? As the xkcd notes, 'some performance enhancements are ok, some are bad', and the line is rather arbitrary at this point.

I see very practical reasons: first of all, uncontrolled use of substances can endanger the life of participants. Why should someone add a sporting rule that can endanger people?

> Why should someone add a sporting rule that can endanger people?

Completely agree. The purpose of sport (in our modern day) is well-being. We should not force anyone to (within reason) be expected to hurt themselves.

However, it strikes me that we are failing to use science in a way that could contribute to sport or human advancement in general. The vast majority of modern doping has no negative health outcomes. The steroid era of the 80s are gone. Many of the most pervasive forms of doping, such as blood doping, EPO, etc. naturally occur in your body.

It has gotten so bad that the NCAA does not permit excessive coffee drinking, as it is considered a form of doping. Furthermore, if you permitted these forms of doping, then the marginal advantage of other more dangerous drugs would be reduced.

I even agree that there should be some acknowledgement about this issue. But when it comes to the Armstrong discussion, this is a mute point. Even if doping were allowed from now on, it doesn't change the status of this practice in the past (i.e., cheating).

Sports/games rules are inherently arbitrary. This is like asking why you can move while dribbling but not while just holding the ball in basketball. There is no why. There only is.

Can you move while tossing the ball in the air repeatedly (dribbling against the sky)?

No.

Wait why? It's just like dribbling except upside down.

It's just the rule.

It's just the rule, man. The rules are what define the game. Why can't I start the bishop where the queen is? It's just the rule. Why can't I have an under inflated ball? Just the rule. Why can't I use a cricket bat in soccer? Just the rule.

In American Football, can you throw a forward pass? Or in Basketball, can you shoot three point shots? Both were not originally in those respective games, and were added. The rules of all sports are evolving, and will continue to do so.

I'm not aware of any sport that restricts your diet, or the amount of exercise or training you can perform. Yet some chemical substances are arbitrarily banned. It is anti-science!

Just to be clear on what is considered doping, the WADA considers any substance (or method) to be on the prohibited list if it meets two of the following 3 criteria[1]:

- It has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance - It represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete - It violates the spirit of sport

So, in theory, the distinction of acceptable and non-acceptable is not drawn (only) in performance-enhancing drugs.

Another thing to consider is that (pre-BALCO) you are not always charged on taking performance-enhancing drugs but in either having some synthetic drugs on your organism detected or having some measurements over what is considered "normal" in humans. For example, T/E higher than 4:1 ratio. This means that the ratio Testosterone/Epitestosterone can be 4:1. If an athlete has a 1:1 level (which is normal), doping himself with testosterone won't be considered positive as long as it's kept below 4:1. All assuming that exogenous testosterone cannot be detected.

As far as I know, BALCO was the first time than some athletes were sanctioned without testing positive.

[1] http://www.usada.org/substances/prohibited-list/ [2] http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/steroid-doping-questio...

It's not. Using a motor on your bicycle, a little propeller tied to your back while swimming, and a mechanically telescoping pole to vault with are also disallowed. So using mechanical assistance is also in the list of disallowed things. An unfortunate loss for the inventive sportsman.

Other disallowed things:

* having spectators strategically fall in the path of your competitors. Unfortunate for the cunning sportsman.

* adjusting the physical conditions of your part of the field (no ultra-bouncy start mat for when you are going to make the long jump). A pity, the inventive sportsman misses out again

* using a separate biological aid. No horses for the sprinter, or palanquins for the long distance runner, no team of people boosting you over the high jump bar. A tragic loss for the sportsman who can recruit nature's finest.

Because we don't want a world in which athletes have to destroy their bodies in order to be competitive.

ETA: And let's be clear, that's exactly where it leads. People will feel compelled to start doping younger and younger, when they can do more and more damage to themselves (like giving themselves testicular cancer) -- young people also have poorer judgment about these things.

We've already seen all this happen.

Ridiculous non-sense. Every sport has rules, cycling is not different. Doping is against the rules, that's why they have anti-doping tests. If LA was doping he was clearly cheating, not playing the game. It doesn't matter how many people are doing that, the only reasonable thing to do would be to report the abuse, instead of repeating it.

Also, what good has he made to the world of sports if now he is a well known cheater, who lost all his ill-gotten titles?

Also, what good has he made to the world of sports if now he is a well known cheater, who lost all his ill-gotten titles?

Asking the question reveals your opinion, but I'll say that I am not bothered by what Lance did. He won those races (both in my mind and in actual reality) no matter what anybody says officially.

No one is disputing whether or not he crossed the finish line first, here. Doping didn't make it easy for him to win, but it surely made it much easier. That in itself is unsportsmanlike and deserving of the ire he's received.

Sports have written rules and unwritten rules. Cycling during the LA era was a cheater's game and the people in charge of it were unwilling to even attempt to clean it up. It's unlikely that any rider in the top 30 of the TdF was clean and the authorities knew it and were complicit. They were getting ratings like never before. Armstrong was bringing the massive US market to the sport and Europeans were watching in record numbers because his success made them angry. There was a game within the game that was all but sanctioned by the unwillingness to address the doping problem. That was the game, one played by the unwritten rules of the sport, that Armstrong played better than anyone else.

> what good has he made to the world of sports if now he is a well known cheater

Beyond the fact that he didn't have to give back any of the money, inspired a ton of cancer patients and cancer donors and had a damned funny cameo in Dodgeball? He brought exposure to an amazing sport to the US. I count myself among the millions of people that would likely never have gotten into cycling without Armstrong. And, cheater or not, my ride up the Tourmalet was a highlight of my trip to France and something I'll remember the rest of my life. If you don't dope, cycling is an amazing exercise that's makes you a healthier person. How many other millions were inspired to get on a bike by Armstrong? Sure, if you take the myopic view that the world of sports is limited to professionals, Armstrong may have destroyed most of what he created. But when you take a wider view, his cheating created a lot of amazing effects that survived the scandal.

Also, what good has he made to the world of sports

I couldn't care less about the world of sports - and I was a champion cyclist in college (RMCCC Silver medal 2006). Look what livestrong and the LA foundation did for cancer research and support.

Clearly beneficial.

This is another example of the "ends justify the means". The charity work does not change a iota of what he did in the sports arena. If that was possible, then for example a thief could take a good portion of his gains and invest on charity to undo other wrongs. In fact, in retrospect his charities can be easily seen as a tentative to buy favorable public opinion.

This is another example of the "ends justify the means".

Okay. So what's the problem? Consequentialism is a valid philosophical outlook.

> Consequentialism is a valid philosophical outlook.

It is also a sign of lack of character.

That's completely ridiculous and is extremely arrogant. I suggest you look into the writings of Iain King.

I think what your trying to say can be more abstractly put as "the ends justify the means".

> Rules in society are also pretty stupid.

If you mean laws than no.. they are not stupid. Killing people and getting away with it is bad. And some of the "rules" in wall street if broken can have an equally horrific impact.

And that comes back to the question do the ends justify the means? Sometimes it does for sure. For Armstrong it could be argued it did.

The other side of the question is this: should society respect people who believe that the end justify the means? I believe the answer to that should be clearly no. So, yes, sometimes you can get what you want by cheating. Should I understand or even respect this? Of course not. Society should be willing to go against anyone who believes and acts on this kind of ideas.

By "stupid" I mean unintelligent, premature, arbitrary, and weak. Rules such as "don't kill thy neighbor" are pretty obvious and don't need to be law for most people to get it. But being imprisoned for smoking weed when alcohol is legal is almost as "stupid" as a moving pick or doping. Those who get away with it have an advantage. Those that don't get pulled over by a man in stripes blowing a whistle. Then rules change, as they should, but that doesn't reverse the "stupid" past.

Not killing comes naturally. Referees are not very natural, but we need them to uphold rules that don't come naturally. Rules don't have to be bad to be stupid or somewhat arbitrary, and they do shape the game/society. But cycling definitely was a stupid game knowing what we all know now. Almost as stupid as pro-wrestling, but at least they don't hide it, which makes them far more respectable than cycling ever was. Armstrong could only do what he did with the higher-ups knowing, and with the leverage he had against them and the entire sport. No one idolizes the International Cycling Union[1] as one does an athlete, but they made the beast that was Lance Armstrong.

The takeaway is that it's wrong to look just at the players. When cheating is a prerequisite to success, it's often the game that is already rigged.

--- [1] http://www.foxsports.com/cycling/story/investigation-interna...

Strongly disagree that rules are stupid. Wrote about that here: https://medium.com/@Exolymph/power-is-necessary-5e35e6ac7817...

Your point about whether doping is inherent in cycling is a good discussion point, but the research that the article describes shows how "Winners turn to cheating" even in cases where drugs aren't part of the equation.

That's a really neat way to say "It's alright because everyone is doing it".

People like you are why companies like Enron happen.

Great post. Unsure why all the responses to this seem to equate cheating in a sport with murder, tax evasion or other rules that are far more fundamental to the proper operation of society.

I see what uber is doing as far more ethically questionable than ubiquitous doping in a sport.

If we didn't view people like Armstrong as role models there wouldn't be much of a problem. But as long as we tell children to view people like him as role models then they better behave ethically. Unless you want to raise a generation of psychopaths.

If you are not cheating, you are not trying. That is pretty much motto of all competitive sports.

Pure, unmitigated bullshit. 'Everyone knew it' is the first defense of a cheater (and of quite a few criminals) but rather than being a true defense that's just an admission of participation in a systematic fraud. There only needs to be one cyclist (in this context) who is racing without doping in accordance with the rules to invalidate your entire thesis; the reality is that people are invited to view and participate in an athletic competition, and that insofar as it is a doping game once you get inside professional cycling, everyone else should be getting prosecuted for perpetuating a fraud upon the public, as Adam Smith recognized centuries ago in The Wealth of Nations when advising governments to be wary of trusting industry associations: 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.'

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Lance Armstrong, you have to hand it to the guy. He certainly made the most out of his cheating win streak through one of the greatest charities of all time. Cheating in sports is one thing. His true legacy was doing whatever he could to help others cheat death as he did.

Or so he says. Of course it's rather difficult to assess the opportunity cost here, since sports-affiliated charities engaged in medical research are now inevitably tainted by association. A look at the Livestrong Foundation's Form 990 suggests the organization spent almost as much on compensating its executive staff and lobbyists as it did on grant issuance, and the amount it has disbursed, while substantial (at least $100m over its lifetime, I estimate) is not so large in absolute terms, such that I question your accolade of 'one of the greatest charities of all time.'

I don't have anything for or against Lance Armstrong; I am not very interested in cycling, and I don't think doping in sport represents some sort of moral nadir, but is merely shabby. But I have a big problem with your uncritical acceptance of the fact that because 'everyone knows' there's an inner game that has little to do with the outer game - a phenomenon which seems to exist in almost every sphere of life - that that's OK. It's fraud perpetuated on the general public, which is educated to both respect and fear the moral code of self-restraint inherent in the social contract, and which (importantly) is the most effective governor of interpersonal relations at the individual level. Even many animals have standards of fairness, and to actively undermine those in an organized fashion is, well, cancerous to civilization and our collective wellbeing. Paradoxically, I've become rather fond of 'pharmabro' Martin Shkreli because while he operated his businesses in extremely anti-social fashion, he is pretty up-front about about the fact that he is doing so for pure economic advantage, in contrast to the blatant hypocrisy of all the other people doing likewise while striking postures of humility.