Professional Video Gamers to Be Tested for Doping | Hacker News Reader

Professional Video Gamers to Be Tested for Doping

time.com

44 pointsshill52 comments

I don't like the concept of word 'doping'. It is just the word which represents a chemical substance to stimulate body for a better performance. There is however such a hate in using this word. In the past even caffeine in the coffee was considered to be a doping. It is not nowadays Everybody should be allowed to use any chemical substance for himself as he wish. He should be responsible for his own action. If he destroys his health, he should pay for it not the society. There are also people who lives on revealing the 'doping sinners'. It is such a waste of money. People cmmon create something reasonable. Don't waste your time looking for a 'doping' to accuse others for taking it! I take a 'doping' so what?

I wouldn't want to compete against people who are prepared to destroy their health to win.

Then you're not going to be able to compete. Basically all professional sports require someone to push themselves beyond regular human limits, and give up future health to get there even without drugs.

I'm interested to know if this is really true.

I don't think non-contact sports require someone to sacrifice health, except for wearing out their body...

And I'm not convinced they wear out their body more than manual laborers.

And there is definitely a qualitative difference between a 16 year old working hard as a teenager to make it as a professional athlete, and perhaps wearing out their body by the end of their career as a professional athlete (say, 30 years old on average), compared to a 16 year old using substances that would count as "doping" to most people.

To put it plainly:

A 16 year old boy who shows promise as a professional athlete can work hard, realize that they're not cut out for the big leagues after college (22 years old), and go on with their life with basically no ill effects aside from the chance of a major injury sustained during their sport.

Whereas a 16 year old boy who shows promise as a professional athlete, works hard, and also dopes for 6 years until he's 22, and then realizes he's not cut out for the big leagues, has probably irreparably damaged his health.

> I don't think non-contact sports require someone to sacrifice health, except for wearing out their body...

That still fits within the bounds of "sacrificing health"

Then they are not going to win very long anyway.

You're already competing against people who are prepared to destroy their health to win - the people who work 80+ hours per week.

If we don't outlaw over-working then I don't see a reason to outlaw the drugs.

We are talking professional competition here, the result of your logic is that anyone who wanted to compete professionaly would have to subject themselves (and their health) to doping.

I don't want to see such a future, where young athletes have no choice but to put their health at severe risk in order to be competitive.

And of course should doping be allowed as you suggest, and naturally everyone would have to use it in order to be competitive, we would see continued escalation in the amount/strength of doping used, since else you would not get a competitive advantage.

In short I can't understand your reasoning.

If we prevent doping we should prevent genetic differences since they are not fair and unjust.

Fairness wasn't the reason present by gillianseed, so I don't see how your post is relevant. The idea is to avoid incentivizing a destructive practice; unless there is some way of changing your genetic code, the same doesn't apply.

Why is "I don't want to see X" considered a valid argument?

Are you kidding me ?

The argument is what follows that statement, how about we discuss that ?

Athletes would kill themselves very quickly. Have you ever heard of Goldman dilemma?: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman%27s_dilemma

Also the 50% of athletes willing to do anything would make it unfair for athletes that wish to perform naturally, always creating a divide in tested vs untested events. Money talks and sponsorship would likely be limited for any non tested version.

What if amphetamines (or some other stimulants) were to become a thing in the IT industry and that workers had no other choice to take some to meet standard performance or be unemployed? All for the benefit of the employers?

That's pretty much what's going on for professional athletes... now, I wouldn't like being forced to take some drugs to be able to make a living. And if we say it's ok to do it for professional sports, how long until someone says it should be ok in other fields?

> What if amphetamines (or some other stimulants) were to become a thing in the IT industry and that workers had no other choice to take some to meet standard performance or be unemployed?

That has pretty much happened already, for median skilled workers in IT. We call it coffee.

> All for the benefit of the employers?

And society. Sports and jobs are different.

There are such things as `professional league'.

I was making a distinction between sport and economic activity; rather than the strict definition of a job.

A sport is zero-sum. Economic activity is normally positive-sum.

> And society. Sports and jobs are different.

How does society benefit from it?

How does society benefit from products/services and innovation/invention? Really!

> How does society benefit from products/services and innovation/invention? Really!

Amphetamines allow for short term gains in productivity for individuals and possibly companies. The products/services/innovations/inventions will be realized regardless of these short term effects. As much as Silicon Valley likes the myth of the lone (drug fueled) rockstar developer, please don't be deluded to think this has any semblance of relevance in reality.

> Amphetamines allow for short term gains in productivity for individuals and possibly companies.

Your premise is incorrect! It depends on the dosage. Low dose amphetamines can be neuroprotective. Even meth!

People also take a combination of drugs to stave off tolerance. Memantine, for example.

> As much as Silicon Valley likes the myth of the lone (drug fueled) rockstar developer, please don't be deluded to think this has any semblance of relevance in reality.

I'm not making reference to that.

Increased productivity is good for living standards—ceteris paribus. I've given two examples of how amphetamines may be used profitably in the longterm (which increases productivity). And because of what I've said in the first sentence, it follows living standards will be improved.

> What if amphetamines (or some other stimulants) were to become a thing in the IT industry and that workers had no other choice to take some to meet standard performance or be unemployed? All for the benefit of the employers?

There is a culture of amphetamine use in the IT industry. I haven't seen articles on it in a while, but I thought it relatively accepted that a lot of people who go find ADHD diagnoses don't actually have the disorder, and are just looking for a dextroamphetamine scrip.

The problem is that if health-destroying "performance enhancers" start to be seen as "acceptable" in sports, most performers will feel obligated to take them if they want to continue their careers, even if they'd normally wouldn't want to do that.

It's kind of how if everyone is allowed to cheat to pass an exam, the ones that don't want to cheat (even if the exam is so hard that they could fail) would be seen as fools (and arguably would be fools for taking the chance to lose the exam by not cheating).

Perfect analogy.

>It's kind of how if everyone is allowed to cheat to pass an exam, the ones that don't want to cheat (even if the exam is so hard that they could fail) would be seen as fools (and arguably would be fools for taking the chance to lose the exam by not cheating).

This might be less true in any field that the exam (or knowledge tested, even) is useful after the fact. Athletes who win due to doping generally have "a career" in chatshows, commentary, etc (Armstrong shows that this can happen even when caught). Alternatively, you have the folk who cheat at exams for certifications and pad resumes with paper-thin experience. It might be foolish to take the time with the learning process, but the end-result is quite different.

> Everybody should be allowed to use any chemical substance for himself as he wish. He should be responsible for his own action.

I fully agree. He should then further demonstrate this responsibility by choosing not to compete in competitions that explicitly forbid this kind of enhancement.

Why should I expect to be free to do what I want and expect to be allowed to compete against people who agree to abide to certain restrictions?

Statler: are the gamers doping?

Waldorf: if you ask me, they're all dopes! Oh ho ho ho ho!

Props to ESL for doing this. Some of this has come about because of how casually some csgo players have discussed how they load up on adderall just before matches.

Hopefully they can clean this up not neccessarily just for the sake of competetive integrity but also to protect the health of the young competitors.

The problem is that many performance enhancing drugs are used to treat legitimate conditions. It will always be easier to get doctor prescription for some players than it would be for others. If you ban Adderal/Ritalin/Modafinil (although the last one is very questionable when it comes to performance benefit but still very useful for motivation/energy when putting long hours practicing) and allow medical exemptions you will end up with privileged group who have access to the "right doctors".

If you ban it and don't allow medical exemptions you will eliminate people who need those drugs to function normally.

I would prefer the latter out of the two: you need a drug to function - tough luck you can't compete but I prefer just allowing wider spectrum of drugs to begin with.

I think the problem with a total ban is just the sheer number of people with diagnoses. For example, I read recently that something like 6% of adults have ADHD (I don't have a source, correct me if that is way off). I personally wouldn't be surprised if the incidence was higher among young geeky types. And Adderall isn't even the only drug that these types of competitions should be worried about.

You can only ban so many people from competing without really starting to affect the potential number of players, which isn't something that private gaming-tournament organizations are going to want to do.

I agree. I even more hate the situation where knowing the right doctors or even living in a country with more prescription-happy ones gives you advantage though.

Makes sense. That said, will they not admit anyone who has a legitimate reason for prescription stimulants?

Why would we want to officially bias competitions toward people with ADD diagnoses?

Because we don't want people abusing drugs.

I fail to see how a policy of "you can't compete if you're taking meth" promotes drug abuse.

Good point - this could create an incentive for people to stop taking the medication that they need just so they're allowed to compete.

On the other hand, if legitimate use is allowed, there are doctors out there who will give you a prescription for faked symptoms.

This is a problem in regular sports too

> "It would be fair to have two Tours de France - one for the asthmatics and one for non-asthmatics," he said. "The funny result would be that the asthmatics would be much faster."

From http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/cycling/2007-07-20-369...

Indeed - I competed in amateur rowing while in University (and was legitimately asthmatic) and at least 4 of the people in my crew became asthmatic during the time that we were training together...

Dosage for controlling ADD compared to that used in a performance enhancing manner is quite drastically different.

Can you quantify the difference?

No, because it isn't true. 10-20mg of adderall will treat ADHD in a hyperactive, but it will make a non hyperactive capable of repetitive tasks that require focus.

I absolutely love the stuff, but I have high blood pressure which it aggravates, so I can't take it. It isn't worth a stroke.

In WADA-controlled sports you can get TUEs[1] to solve that problem.

[1] Therapeutic Use Exemptions[2]

[2] https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/science-medical/thera...

So... Why not caffeine too?

Sponsorship by Monster etc (edits - but more likely because it's not considered a performance enhancing drug in traditional sports)

and alcohol

>we wish to ensure we can provide a fair playing field for all participating players

By restricting access to performance enhancing drugs to those who have the connections to get around the screens that the ESL end up using to try and catch people?

Here's a radical thought: it's a fair playing field if everyone takes adderal before the match.

> Here's a radical thought: it's a fair playing field if everyone takes adderal before the match.

Is it fair though? What about people who don't want to (or can't) take adderal before a match. It's no more fair, it's just another playing field. One with more drugs rather than less.

It's equal opportunity, at the very least. To my mind that _is_ more fair.

...but I disagree with the idea of doping up the entire competing body, for what it's worth.

Olympic shooters are forbidden to use beta blockers.

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