Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: I don't like it up, all right, Nate Silver. Today
Speaker 1: on the show, we're actually doing an episode that's inspired
Speaker 1: by one of our listeners, Brandon. So, by the way, listeners,
Speaker 1: please do keep sending us questions. And Brandon is wondering
Speaker 1: about performance enhancing drugs. He specifically asked for performance enhancing
Speaker 1: drugs outside of sports, but I think we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about sports as well. So in the army, he says
Speaker 1: that they talk a lot about alertness, decision making under stress.
Speaker 1: Caffeine is basically a field issue stimulant. He goes on
Speaker 1: to talk about adderall modafinal and the fact that it's
Speaker 1: being used not just in military, but you know, college students, professionals,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So he wants to
Speaker 1: know what are our thoughts and what are our experiences,
Speaker 1: and you know, it definitely does say a lot about
Speaker 1: modern performance culture. So this is a topic that I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of thinking about, both in the past
Speaker 1: but also obviously as I'm working on a book about cheating.
Speaker 1: You know, I do think about all of these ways
Speaker 1: to kind of enhance performance that may or may not
Speaker 1: be legal in any given setting. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot to say here. Do you want me to
Speaker 1: start with some thoughts, Nate, or do you want to
Speaker 1: kind of give you give your reaction. So, you know,
Speaker 1: people have been trying to figure out for decades, like
Speaker 1: how can I think better?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: How can I perform better? How can I run better?
Speaker 1: How can I do everything just a little bit better?
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of a perfect storm with kind
Speaker 1: of social media and technology and all of these things
Speaker 1: where we're in a culture that's obsessed with I mean,
Speaker 1: the culture has always been obsessed with youth, but now
Speaker 1: we feel like, finally like we're in then do not
Speaker 1: die ever moment that if I can just live for
Speaker 1: another ten years, I'll be close to the moment in
Speaker 1: time where we can all live forever or at least
Speaker 1: greatly expand our life expectancy and our healthy life expectancy.
Speaker 1: So don't die. And also let's absolutely optimize every single
Speaker 1: moment of every single day cognitive function, physical function. In
Speaker 1: the case of certain social media influencer gurus who also
Speaker 1: happen to run big companies that sell supplements a rectile
Speaker 1: function measured during the night. We won't be naming names,
Speaker 1: but I think anyone who's online knows exactly who I'm
Speaker 1: talking about right now. So how do you basically enhance
Speaker 1: every single element of existence to the max? And we're
Speaker 1: seeing things, Yes, some of them are pills. Modaffanel has
Speaker 1: been kind of in in the mix for a long time,
Speaker 1: so has adderall. There are other drugs that have been
Speaker 1: basically tested for Alzheimer's and that are now also kind
Speaker 1: of in that conversation. But it's not just drugs, right,
Speaker 1: It's things like cold plunges, infra red saunas. You know,
Speaker 1: do you do this to do that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What can I possibly do to get just like a
Speaker 1: little bit better? And this is not a monolithic conversation
Speaker 1: in the sense that there's a big difference between like
Speaker 1: poker players who that they're going to microdose before a
Speaker 1: tournament because they think it's going to make them more
Speaker 1: creative and find better spots. This does happen, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm not just throwing this out in the blue and
Speaker 1: like a Lance Armstrong who decides that, you know, everyone's
Speaker 1: doping in cycling, so I'm going to do it too,
Speaker 1: and we're going to create this culture where everyone is
Speaker 1: taking drugs that are explicitly forbidden to enhance their performance. Right,
Speaker 1: So we've got it's a huge spectrum, right, And there's
Speaker 1: a huge spectrum between the college student who decides to
Speaker 1: take adderall even though they technically don't have ADHD, so
Speaker 1: that they can finish a paper, which, by the way, Nate,
Speaker 1: is probably not happening anymore because you have chat GBT
Speaker 1: who's your aderol, who could just finish the paper for you,
Speaker 1: so you don't even need to take those supplements that
Speaker 1: was you know, long before, or the investment baggers taking
Speaker 1: cocaine in the middle of the night to kind of
Speaker 1: stay up and make sure that they can get their
Speaker 1: their spreadsheets or whatever it is that they're doing done
Speaker 1: by the morning. And then the wellness gurus who say, well,
Speaker 1: even though medafinil is a drug that was developed for
Speaker 1: narcolepsy and sometimes to treat ADHD and may not be
Speaker 1: the thing that I should be taken to kind of
Speaker 1: enhance my concentration, even though there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: data on that. But I'm going to do it just
Speaker 1: in case because I want to kind of maximize my
Speaker 1: ability to be the full me. All of these things
Speaker 1: are different, right, and I have different opinions on these,
Speaker 1: on the different gradations along the way, and even ones
Speaker 1: that seem very straightforward, such as, you know, we should
Speaker 1: not be allowing any performance enhancing drugs in sports, When
Speaker 1: you start digging down, it ends up that some of
Speaker 1: them might be like a little bit murkier than you
Speaker 1: would think, right. I would I would love to say
Speaker 1: that I'm just you know, we shouldn't be doing any
Speaker 1: of this, but you know, as are as listener Brandon
Speaker 1: points out, caffeine is a great performance enhancing drug, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not like everyone is living this existence where
Speaker 1: we're not taking any substances to increase performance. You need
Speaker 1: to kind of figure out what exactly are you talking about.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is one of those episodes
Speaker 1: where there are going to be a lot of shades
Speaker 1: of gray. I think that it's one of these case
Speaker 1: by case basis where you have to really understand what's
Speaker 1: the intention here, what are the data here, what is
Speaker 1: the responsibility here, and what are the rules here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the poker world, do you have an interesting
Speaker 2: cross section of a little bit of everything. Right, you
Speaker 2: certainly have some stimulant use ranging for people who are
Speaker 2: probably taking out of all the people who are taking
Speaker 2: zims or vaping you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, by the way, let me just interrupt you
Speaker 1: immediately just to say, we said caffeine, but nicotine is
Speaker 1: another huge performance enhancing drug that people take all the time,
Speaker 1: and zin is gaining huge market shares. I seeeson at
Speaker 1: the poker tables all the time.
Speaker 2: Please continue, Yeah, and in part because like those are
Speaker 2: as weird as smoking cigarettes, right, which is more disruptive,
Speaker 2: you know, those are kind of more discreet ways to
Speaker 2: do with that, you know. But yeah, people are taking
Speaker 2: anterall people are. There's varying amounts of drinking. People are
Speaker 2: different tolerances. I will often have a best of one
Speaker 2: or two at dinner a poker tournament, right, But like everyone,
Speaker 2: we have differently different things, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so you have to know kind of your own
Speaker 2: I'm not claim aning of this is game theory optimal, right,
Speaker 2: you have to kind of know your own physiology a
Speaker 2: little bit, but not as much drinking as you might
Speaker 2: have seen twenty years ago, you know, I've always surprised
Speaker 2: that there are some players who get quite stoned on
Speaker 2: dinner breaks and stuff like that, or any break, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, we were talking about the well known player
Speaker 2: Maria the other day who seemed to me quite stone
Speaker 2: and not playing optimally, And you have some of those,
Speaker 2: but like there are some people who are microdocing on
Speaker 2: different things, and like again I don't know, right, it's
Speaker 2: also partly a matter of habit, right, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: probably done more drugs than you in my life, Maria
Speaker 2: forever reason. Like I've just never really tried to play
Speaker 2: poker under the influence of THC, though I'm not familiar
Speaker 2: with THC, whereas I have on alcohol, and so like
Speaker 2: you're just kind of like part of what you're familiar
Speaker 2: with I think about poker. It's also important, though, is
Speaker 2: like these are really long sessions, particularly in tournaments, right,
Speaker 2: So things that sustain energy and focus for a long time,
Speaker 2: like you know, you don't typically see like necessarily like
Speaker 2: a lot of like cocaine used to take an extreme
Speaker 2: example of poke returnaments because like that is a drug
Speaker 2: where you kind of burn brightly for very quickly and
Speaker 2: then crash out right. You know that will work if
Speaker 2: you're playing from noon to midnight in some tournament. I mean,
Speaker 2: unless you're taking a lot of it, I guess right.
Speaker 1: But adderall, which is kind of a controlled version of speed,
Speaker 1: is something and riddle. These are things that are that
Speaker 1: are actually incredibly common in the poker world, and they
Speaker 1: are common not just in the poker world, but in
Speaker 1: all sorts of professions that require concentration, right, that require
Speaker 1: people to kind of pay attention for long periods of time.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is, so I've actually written about this,
Speaker 1: and I have kind of dug a little bit deeper
Speaker 1: into the data. With drugs like adderall, I think this
Speaker 1: is true of a lot of performance enhancing drugs when
Speaker 1: you are taking anything that is off label, right, which
Speaker 1: means that it's not prescribed for this exact condition, especially
Speaker 1: when it's something that is for a cognitive function and
Speaker 1: meant to counteract something that is kind of a neurological
Speaker 1: abnormality or something that is kind of not a neurotypical brain.
Speaker 1: When you put it into a neurotypical brain that doesn't
Speaker 1: have these issues, you might get some benefits, but also
Speaker 1: some unintended side effects. So the funny thing I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's funny because I don't do adderall or
Speaker 1: riddle an off label. The funny thing about it is
Speaker 1: that there's actually a disconnect when you take these drugs,
Speaker 1: quite often with what you think your work product is
Speaker 1: and what it actually is, because it does put you
Speaker 1: into this like laser focus where you think, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: writing like a brilliant paper, or I'm creating this brilliant
Speaker 1: work product, or if I'm playing pogram, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to execute all these wonderful creative lines. But it
Speaker 1: actually really dampens creativity and makes you create things that
Speaker 1: to you might seem great, but that actually objectively you're
Speaker 1: working a lot, but your work output is not necessarily
Speaker 1: what you think it is. And so it's a very
Speaker 1: funny disconnect between self perception and actual performance. And so
Speaker 1: when it comes to cognitive enhancement, that is something that
Speaker 1: you see now. Obviously when it's physical, usually there's no
Speaker 1: disconnect between what you think you're doing and how you're
Speaker 1: doing because you have an objective measure immediately, right, am
Speaker 1: I running faster? Am I cycling faster? Am I able
Speaker 1: to actually lift more weight?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: When I use steroids? Whatever it is? But when it
Speaker 1: comes to cognitive enhancement, you have these funny things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked to Nick Thompson, the author of The
Speaker 2: Running Round. Nick is one of the best runners in
Speaker 2: the world and age class the other week. Right, Well,
Speaker 2: one of the things about running is that there's not
Speaker 2: much variation in it, right, You're running of existence. Most
Speaker 2: people who a runners are running a few routes. If
Speaker 2: they run commonly. That can be a few things. It
Speaker 2: can be traffic, right, you can other joggers and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, right, or wind or weather right, But like
Speaker 2: for the most part, it can be a fairly objective
Speaker 2: benchmark about your kind of overall partiovascular et cetera health
Speaker 2: that day, in your effort level. Whereas in poker it's
Speaker 2: extremely noisy. You know, the best poker players might have
Speaker 2: in the tough field and ROI of plus ten percent
Speaker 2: and a mediocre player on his B game, not the
Speaker 2: C game, not the F game, but like on this
Speaker 2: B game, right, might be minus ten percent, right, plus
Speaker 2: ten which is minus saying oh, of course, of one
Speaker 2: poker tournament. You don't protect the dissample of like hundreds
Speaker 2: of tournaments to distinguish those And yeah, I certainly have had.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a common thing among writers too, to
Speaker 2: use like things like adderall. I've certainly been around people
Speaker 2: who seem to be constantly on adderall and they're talking
Speaker 2: a mile a minute and they're kind of hyper right
Speaker 2: and kind of babbling, And you know, that's not a
Speaker 2: drug that leaves me with a great impression. But like again,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna my own habits right, good and bad.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna creaque anybody. My empirical experience is that
Speaker 2: one's a bit more noticeable than than some of the others,
Speaker 2: maybe among the drugs that people are kind of using
Speaker 2: for cognitive entancement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so just full disclaimer, I've never used any cognitive
Speaker 1: enhancing pills. And I say pills because I drink a
Speaker 1: fuck ton of caffeine. Okay, yeah, so like and I've
Speaker 1: actually never used nicotine, so I've never I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 1: come across those kind of this goody two shoes, but
Speaker 1: I do I drink, and you know, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: this for like moral reasons or anything. It's just not
Speaker 1: I don't think it's right for me. And also I
Speaker 1: have a lot of allergies and can stand smoke. But
Speaker 1: I've never used any nicotine products. I've never smoked cigarettes.
Speaker 1: No nicotine. By the way, poker players also love nicotine pills,
Speaker 1: nicotine patches, not just poker players. Like this is stuff
Speaker 1: that people use. They get into the science and they
Speaker 1: listen to the kind of gurus of how to enhance
Speaker 1: your performance peak performance at any given time, and they
Speaker 1: do stuff like that. So just total disclaimer, I've never
Speaker 1: used any of those, but I do use caffeine. And
Speaker 1: when I play poker, I am always drinking green tea,
Speaker 1: and I specifically drink green tea because I've done the
Speaker 1: research and I know that green tea has the best
Speaker 1: kind of way of absorbing elthonine into your brain, which
Speaker 1: helps you sustain your attention for longer periods of time.
Speaker 1: Am I using a performance enhancing drug, Nate, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like I realized, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: practice semantics here. All I'm saying is that we do
Speaker 1: make choices all the time that try to optimize how
Speaker 1: we're doing today. By the way, no amount of green
Speaker 1: tea is probably going to make me at absolute peak
Speaker 1: performance because I didn't get that much sleep. And what
Speaker 1: we know is the number one cognitive enhancing drug is sleep.
Speaker 1: Like nothing else, nothing else comes even close. So getting
Speaker 1: proper amounts of sleep is just like, you know, light
Speaker 1: years ahead of anything else. And so when you do
Speaker 1: something like that, well obviously it's not a performance enhancing drug,
Speaker 1: but it might as well be. So you know, there
Speaker 1: are so let's just I guess put a disclaimer and say, Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: there's things that everyone does, like caffeine and it might
Speaker 1: give you a little bit more cognitive power. And then
Speaker 1: there are other things that people use that are more
Speaker 1: out there, and we can argue that while nicotine is
Speaker 1: closer to caffeine, or we can argue that it's not,
Speaker 1: but modafino definitely kind of on the other on the other.
Speaker 2: Side of that.
Speaker 1: And do you have a prescription, right, is it something
Speaker 1: that you are actually using correctly because you need to.
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, if you do have a
Speaker 1: prescription for it because you need to, is that giving
Speaker 1: you an unfair advantage? Is it giving you an unfair edge?
Speaker 1: They're all of these, you know, when we start getting
Speaker 1: into the ethics of it. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: poker doesn't ban any sort of substances, So that's like
Speaker 1: That's another thing here.
Speaker 2: Right, there's a didn't sama, which is yes, there was,
Speaker 2: there was.
Speaker 1: It's like, come on, yeah, he proposed a drug free
Speaker 1: poker tournament where you could not where you'd get tested,
Speaker 1: and you weren't allowed to use anything. I don't know
Speaker 1: if caffeine was included in that, because if it was,
Speaker 1: then you know, sorry, Tom, I'm I'm totally out. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, I do want to say that it's not
Speaker 1: against the rules in poker to take whatever the fuck
Speaker 1: you want to take, And to be perfectly honest, I
Speaker 1: would say, like, if you want to take it, go
Speaker 1: right ahead, because I actually don't think it gives you
Speaker 1: that much of an edge, and I think it sometimes
Speaker 1: might make you play worse.
Speaker 3: And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 2: We can put some bounds on this, right, Like, It's
Speaker 2: not like in poker there are look, you could make
Speaker 2: educated guesses about exactly which helpful and or unhelpful substances
Speaker 2: different players are taking, you know, maybe apart from the
Speaker 2: really stone players and the really adderally ones. Right, And
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily so obvious, right, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: like there's some class of players that are like thirty
Speaker 2: percent better than the rest. You're like, oh, they're all
Speaker 2: on the drug apps, right, And there are exotic things
Speaker 2: that are very subtle. You know, some of the players
Speaker 2: take beta blockers. I'm not an expert in any of
Speaker 2: this stuff, but I think it has the effect of
Speaker 2: like lowering your heart rate and things like that, which
Speaker 2: can be helpful to a remain calmer maybe when you're
Speaker 2: under high stress, and or to reduce the appearance of
Speaker 2: physical tells.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I remember actually the main event of the World Series
Speaker 2: right where there was a guy I put against a
Speaker 2: day two or day three right saying, right across from him,
Speaker 2: he just kind of thing where like his heart was
Speaker 2: like literally kind of very visible, and it's whatever artery
Speaker 2: carctorate or something artery, right, every player knows it corroded, corroded.
Speaker 2: And it was the most visible instance of this I'd
Speaker 2: ever seen. It's the main event. He had a fairly
Speaker 2: big sack on day three whatever it was. And and furthermore,
Speaker 2: he basically had like a running heart rate monitor for
Speaker 2: this player at all times, right, Like furthermore, I quickly
Speaker 2: do so there was a pattern that when he has
Speaker 2: a good hand, some players actually more nerves than their bluffing, right,
Speaker 2: this guy waiting in a big hand. Do you start
Speaker 2: to see boom boom boom boom of this kind of
Speaker 2: it was kind of funny, right, but like, yeah, but
Speaker 2: the physical tell you know, if if you start having
Speaker 2: a bunch of predictable involuntary takes, or if you can
Speaker 2: suppress those ticks in some ways, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: creating just like a pigd use. And poker is not
Speaker 2: created as like some yeah moral panic wearers and the
Speaker 2: other world I know sports then than it is of course, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think.
Speaker 1: So let's uh, let's actually talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit because so I have very very different perspectives about
Speaker 1: using all of these drugs, all of these techniques, whatever
Speaker 1: whatever you want to use when it is allowed versus
Speaker 1: when it's not allowed. So poker, you know, knock yourself out.
Speaker 1: If you are an investment banker and you want to
Speaker 1: add her all it up or cocaine it up or whatever,
Speaker 1: it is awesome, like you do you right, and if
Speaker 1: your superiors are happy with your work, awesome. My onion
Speaker 1: changes completely when we have explicit rules that say, okay,
Speaker 1: you can not take you know, these performance enhancing drugs
Speaker 1: right when we're talking about cycling. The argument but everyone's
Speaker 1: doing it to me holds no water, right, I don't
Speaker 1: fucking care like that. That is, if it's a rule,
Speaker 1: that it means that everyone is cheating. If everyone is cheating,
Speaker 1: either you call out the cheating, you quit the sport,
Speaker 1: you know, you do something else. And it's interesting because there,
Speaker 1: you know, as I've been kind of researching cheating in games,
Speaker 1: I talked to a baseball player who was roommates with
Speaker 1: another player who was suspended for for using steroids and
Speaker 1: coast I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say anything else, Nate.
Speaker 1: You know these sports a little too well. And it
Speaker 1: was one of these things where you know, this roommate said,
Speaker 1: like I, you know, people were doing I just thought
Speaker 1: it was wrong, so I didn't and like, I have
Speaker 1: no regrets about it, even though kind if my roommate
Speaker 1: ended up having like a much more storied career for
Speaker 1: a time than I did, because like I, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, I basically said no, and my career ended
Speaker 1: like I, you know, eventually kind of had to retire.
Speaker 1: And but it's not like you're forced to do it.
Speaker 1: You make choices. So anyway, you can. I don't care if, like,
Speaker 1: if the culture is that everyone is doing it. What
Speaker 1: I care about it is it within the rules or
Speaker 1: is it not within the rules. And if you it's
Speaker 1: not within the rules and you're doing it, then you're cheating.
Speaker 1: And if you're trying to figure out ways of doing
Speaker 1: it without getting caught by using these new drugs and
Speaker 1: aren't yet detectable on tests, then again you're cheating, and
Speaker 1: you're cheating in an even more kind of insidious way.
Speaker 1: That is ruining the kind of sportsmanship right the the
Speaker 1: playing field for everyone else, and that is kind of
Speaker 1: ruining the integrity of your sport. And I you know,
Speaker 1: things like Nate, you know, the enhanced games that were
Speaker 1: announced like that. I'm like, yeah, like, what what are
Speaker 1: we even talking about? Like, I guess people, you know,
Speaker 1: you want to see a lot of people on steroids
Speaker 1: go like to me, that's not even a sport. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what are we even doing here? And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of athletes felt the same way. So on the
Speaker 1: one hand, I said, there were going to be a
Speaker 1: lot of shades of gray here and this seems black
Speaker 1: and white, But I'm actually going to take a step
Speaker 1: back and put it back into the shades of gray.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite sports stories that I think
Speaker 1: I've mentioned on this podcast before, but I'm just going
Speaker 1: to say it again was this champion of Finnish skier
Speaker 1: whom I've written about in the past, Iro Manturanta. I
Speaker 1: apologize if I'm mispronouncing that I don't speak Finnish, but
Speaker 1: he one seven Olympic medals over four games, three gold medals,
Speaker 1: two silver medals, two bronze medals, and at the time,
Speaker 1: like no one had done anything comparable, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: insane if you're thinking about seven metals over four games, like,
Speaker 1: holy shit. And he was accused of doping, and he
Speaker 1: was tested, and it seemed to confirm that he was
Speaker 1: doping because the red blood cells in his blood there
Speaker 1: were multiple deviations away from the average range, and so
Speaker 1: he was accused of doping. But then it turned out
Speaker 1: that he didn't dope. He was actually clean, and he
Speaker 1: carried a genetic mutation in a receptor that controls the
Speaker 1: production of red blood cells, and that genetic mutation ran
Speaker 1: in his family, right, So it turns out that basically
Speaker 1: his entire family were kind of these mutants that had
Speaker 1: this red blood cell the plant that was just constantly,
Speaker 1: you know, basically constantly doping their blood. By the way,
Speaker 1: this is not if people are listening to this and
Speaker 1: it's like, who can I do this? Please don't because
Speaker 1: this mutation also causes polythemia, which is a disease of
Speaker 1: red blood cells, and monty Ante did have it, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have any of the negative symptoms. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so you have this person who was absolutely cleared right
Speaker 1: and he wasn't doping, but he just naturally had this
Speaker 1: insane advantage. Now you can look at someone like this
Speaker 1: and say, well, if he has this mutation and he's
Speaker 1: basically naturally doping, shouldn't we allow everyone else to kind
Speaker 1: of dope to the same level. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's true because then, you know, you can start making
Speaker 1: that argument with all sorts of different things. But that
Speaker 1: just goes to show that there are so many different
Speaker 1: variations here, and there's so much about the human body
Speaker 1: that we don't know, and it's so easy to start
Speaker 1: making the you know, the fairness argument that I think
Speaker 1: that that's it's an argument that we shouldn't be trying
Speaker 1: to make because people are different and so all we
Speaker 1: can do is to try to make rules that control
Speaker 1: that control to the best of our abilities, what substances
Speaker 1: you can use to enhance your performance versus how you
Speaker 1: can enhance your performance through your own physical merits and metal.
Speaker 1: Because you know, isn't that the purpose of watching sports
Speaker 1: and kind of watching competitors, right, that we see what
Speaker 1: the human body is capable of on its own. We'll
Speaker 1: be back right after this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look to some degree, especially in like maybe Olympic
Speaker 2: type sports, which are sometimes sometimes a little bit more
Speaker 2: linear functions of particular type of ability in one or
Speaker 2: two areas, right, I mean you are selecting for people
Speaker 2: who are genetic, yeah, genetic super You know the other
Speaker 2: thing this comes up, it's gonna mention it once, right,
Speaker 2: is you'll periorectically get athletes who are intersect in some form.
Speaker 2: It's not really the same thing as frans, right, it's
Speaker 2: you know, how they're born.
Speaker 1: They're born, yeah, chromosome.
Speaker 2: But inherently I have to draw some lines because you know,
Speaker 2: we're not gonna talk about the gender binary vertus spectrum here,
Speaker 2: But if you're looking for outliers, you're going to find
Speaker 2: people who outliers in lots of different ways and that
Speaker 2: and that creates issues, but they look, Yeah, the game
Speaker 2: theory part of this that we haven't invoked yet is
Speaker 2: that you do have any prisoners still limon when other
Speaker 2: people are are doping. Right, So, like in any workplace
Speaker 2: kind of culture, I mean, the initial question comes from
Speaker 2: like the army, right, the you know, what is tolerated.
Speaker 4: Versus tacitly encouraged versus not so tacitly encouraged versus you know,
Speaker 4: but you also get to a point where like maybe
Speaker 4: you're just kind of falling behind in an extremely high
Speaker 4: performance area if if everyone else is doing something.
Speaker 2: You're not buried bonds. I guess the most famous slash
Speaker 2: infamous steroid user in baseball history was kind of like
Speaker 2: this fucking Mark maguire and Sammy Sosa guys, they're juicing, right.
Speaker 2: I was better than them before steroids alleged, and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be better than these fucking guys afterwards. So I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take steroids too. When he has like what are
Speaker 2: still the best offensive seasons in baseball history and kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, just this kind of huge nonlinear outlier season,
Speaker 2: seventy three home runs in a year, you know whatever,
Speaker 2: it was a six hundred on base percentage are very
Speaker 2: very high. Right, But you a prison's love if you
Speaker 2: don't have like you know, it's the same thing as
Speaker 2: like cat GPT being used to cheat in college essays. Right,
Speaker 2: if you don't have good enforcement, then like then you
Speaker 2: get in the dilema where it's like all my classmates
Speaker 2: are doing this shit, right, so like why do I
Speaker 2: have to work five times as hard as them and
Speaker 2: get like a worse grade? And look, I don't know
Speaker 2: how effective these regimes actually are in different sports. You know,
Speaker 2: if you told me that, hey, people are using things
Speaker 2: that are hard to detect, that wouldn't surprise me, Right,
Speaker 2: you know, I think sports have kind of figured it
Speaker 2: out that, like to have a big moral outrage and
Speaker 2: panic over this isn't necessarily good for business. Right. There
Speaker 2: are still a couple baseball players that could suspend it
Speaker 2: every year for different types of peds. Right, It's not
Speaker 2: quite perceived as a pr thing that it was. And
Speaker 2: like the in the you know, late nineteen nineties and
Speaker 2: early two thousands, which is kind of considered the whole
Speaker 2: steroid era, you know, baseball has this kind of record
Speaker 2: book that's very sacred, right. People care a lot about
Speaker 2: the home run record and the betting average record and
Speaker 2: everything else, right whereas in football it's a bit less too.
Speaker 2: People Football flavor a team sport. You know, football a
Speaker 2: little bit more slaps on the wrist for different types
Speaker 2: of pedus. You know, Look, you can even if you
Speaker 2: want to get funky, you can even say, okay, are
Speaker 2: you being a bad teammate by not using steroids? Right?
Speaker 2: You know, well, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean I think that the only like the way out
Speaker 1: of this prisoner's dilemma is through external enforcement and penalties,
Speaker 1: right where the benefits in the moment of doping are
Speaker 1: outweighed by the potential penalties. So you know what comes
Speaker 1: to mind to me right now is Russia in the Olympics,
Speaker 1: right where you had basically an entire delegation doping, including
Speaker 1: including some athletes who didn't realize that they were doping
Speaker 1: because the coaches just gave them supplements and like said,
Speaker 1: this is the health regime, and we're giving these performance
Speaker 1: enhancing drugs to everyone, or at least that's the story.
Speaker 1: And I actually believe it in the sense that I
Speaker 1: believe that there were athletes who had no idea that
Speaker 1: they were doping, and then you know, you strip every
Speaker 1: one of the medals, you disqualify them, and then the
Speaker 1: team can't compete in the Olympics, and no one can
Speaker 1: compete in the Olympics. That's a pretty big disincentive, right
Speaker 1: That will tell people, Okay, you know what, maybe this
Speaker 1: is not a good idea because the risks and the
Speaker 1: penalties will have to pay far outweigh the benefit of winning,
Speaker 1: you know, gold medal now, because we're going to lose
Speaker 1: that gold medal anyway, and then we're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to compete going forward. So if you had
Speaker 1: standards like that across the board, and if you really
Speaker 1: take the enforcement seriously, then I think that changes behavior
Speaker 1: because that changes behavioral incentives, and that changes the culture
Speaker 1: from everyone is doing it to okay, people are not
Speaker 1: going to be doing it anymore. But you also have
Speaker 1: to be smart, right, You also have to test correctly
Speaker 1: and you have to stay on top of this shit,
Speaker 1: right you can't. You have to have people who are
Speaker 1: out in the field figuring out what are the latest drugs, like,
Speaker 1: what is the cutting edge, what are people using? How
Speaker 1: do we detect this so that you don't have situations
Speaker 1: where cheaters are trying to kind of stay ahead of
Speaker 1: the system, which also creates very perverse incentives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, and that you're willing to like punish the
Speaker 2: actual cheaters, you know, absolutely. Johnick Sinner, who is one
Speaker 2: of the two best men'sness players in the world, has
Speaker 2: been accused of doping taking case amounts of coster ball.
Speaker 2: It looks like I'm not a steroid knowledgeable person, community
Speaker 2: stairoid nolatile person. But you know, hey, if he's a
Speaker 2: big draw, maybe each hearing the other cheek. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've seen, you've seen the poker world as nothing great
Speaker 2: about people who are big names get away with a
Speaker 2: lot more.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with that said, if you look at the whole
Speaker 2: list of all Major League Baseball players who have been suspended,
Speaker 2: which is kind of the longest, most consistent regime, there
Speaker 2: definitely are some all stars, right. However, it has moved
Speaker 2: more towards the more marginal players because, like, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're ten percent better, I mean it's also an
Speaker 2: open question kind of how much sexually helps, right, But
Speaker 2: leaning that aside, if you get ten percent better and
Speaker 2: you're already pretty good, I mean that definitely produces benefits, right, absolutely,
Speaker 2: But you probably already have all the money you'll need
Speaker 2: for life. I mean, baseball's a sport that has long careers.
Speaker 2: If you are taking kind of like long term risks
Speaker 2: with your health, right, I mean, you know, some of
Speaker 2: these anacolic steroids are not about to be good for
Speaker 2: your long term health, right, they may help in the
Speaker 2: short run, right, Yeah, if you're on the margins of
Speaker 2: the major leagues and you get in a major league roster,
Speaker 2: where what's some minim cell I'm sure you know if
Speaker 2: mid six figures now at least, right, you get that
Speaker 2: for a couple of years, you get a major league tension,
Speaker 2: you get your first post draft team contract, I will
Speaker 2: use I'm gonna avoid more textual small terms here onence
Speaker 2: being I know them, right, but like you know, if
Speaker 2: you get like a real free agent contract.
Speaker 1: By your audience, you mean you're a co host night
Speaker 1: my co host.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so some more marginal guys who are trying to
Speaker 2: extend their careers, right, because ten percent better when there's
Speaker 2: a whole threshold and anything all threshold of talent near
Speaker 2: the break even line either just good enough to make
Speaker 2: the major leagues you're just good enough to have a
Speaker 2: regular starting job or just not good enough, right, And
Speaker 2: most are the people where there's the most pressure, even
Speaker 2: though it's the Vury Bonds and the Yonick Centers and
Speaker 2: stuff the world that receive more public scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think kind of to to sum up,
Speaker 1: I think we both agree that if we want to
Speaker 1: keep it clean, like first of all, like performance enhancing drugs,
Speaker 1: yeah or nay, like in things where it's where people
Speaker 1: don't care, like poker, you know, whatever you do you
Speaker 1: once again, because we don't even know what benefits necessarily
Speaker 1: these are coming from any of these things. In areas
Speaker 1: where there are explicit rules against them, right like sports,
Speaker 1: then absolutely not. And I don't think there should be exceptions.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, big big names need
Speaker 1: to get just as much, need to be penalized just
Speaker 1: as much as smaller names. To bring it back to poker,
Speaker 1: this means that you know, things that are illegal, like
Speaker 1: cheating of different sorts which are not cognitive drugs or
Speaker 1: anything like that needs to be like very strictly punished
Speaker 1: no matter who you are, even if you're kind of
Speaker 1: the number one name in the game. I don't care.
Speaker 1: You need to realize that there are going to be
Speaker 1: very strict penalties against these sorts of behaviors. And that's
Speaker 1: the way that you kind of emerge from the prisoner's
Speaker 1: dilemma that you were describing, Nate. So we've got, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got areas like poker where it's legal. You've got
Speaker 1: areas like sports where it's not. Then you've got areas
Speaker 1: like the army where presumably they're doing their research and
Speaker 1: they want people to function as well as they possibly can.
Speaker 1: And that's its own Yeah, that's its own beast, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, if you think that this is going to create
Speaker 1: better soldiers and the soldiers are okay with it, then
Speaker 1: by all means, right, like we want the best functioning force.
Speaker 1: And there your analogy of are you hurting the team
Speaker 1: if you don't do it?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Are you hurting the team if you're in the army
Speaker 1: where the other country has people using this and you aren't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of are. And so so that's like that's
Speaker 1: its own different can of worms. Right, that's a totally
Speaker 1: different area. But I would say that, you know, please
Speaker 1: do try to figure out whether you're mortgaging your health
Speaker 1: in the long term, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't realize that there is a long term cost
Speaker 1: to a lot of these performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My general thing is assume that in competitive industries,
Speaker 2: which basically everything is now in our capitalistic world. I
Speaker 2: don't like capitalism, Maria, but like assume that people will
Speaker 2: optimize for their incentives. Right, if you create rules that
Speaker 2: are easily to work around or are poorly structured, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of money or fame or championships to
Speaker 2: win on the line, assume that some substantial fraction of
Speaker 2: your player of population in a sport or game, right,
Speaker 2: will have no moral qualms about taking advantage of of
Speaker 2: both words. Yeah, but that said, I'm going to have
Speaker 2: a performance enhancing drug called lunch.
Speaker 1: Likewise, night, let's both go enhance our performance by food.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
Speaker 1: out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot FM.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And by me Nate Silver. The show was a Cool
Speaker 2: production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 2: by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwit Lydia,
Speaker 2: Jean Kott, and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixinging by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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