Should this guy able to compete against normal people?

Having prosthetic legs is a definite abnormality, not a normality. He is using an artificial enhancement to augment his performance, similar to those who use anabolic steroids or blood doping in order to better compete, which is considered cheating.

 

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It's considered cheating...unless you have a medical condition which requires the use of growth hormones. In which case all you need is a note from your doctor and a brief investigation by the sport's governing body. You know, just like what happened here.

 

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General Comment

General Comment

Acknowledging the larger consideration in the quoted post, I'm isolating this part in order to reframe the general question of the thread.

I wish I could remember which particular enterprise it was (AD Police Files, maybe; I cannot be certain), but back in the '90s, when I first started noticing anime, I remember being really high and trying to reconcile a filler scene in which a couple of high school girls were having a fluff vanity conversation: What cybernetics do you want to get?

It struck me as a profoundly odd consideration. Indeed, those who have witnessed my occasional assertion that whatever we willfully do to ourselves as a species still counts as selection and evolution might also recall that I track the underlying philosophical inquiry to that scene.

For the current discussion, though, I would pose a simple enough question: If Oscar Pistorius has an "advantage", who wants to replace their lower legs with what he's got?

My point being that people who want to run fast probably aren't going to be lining up to have their legs amputated at the knee so that they can get the latest prosthetics.

• • •​

There is also a larger question here. The question of "disability" in sports is a long controversy. Should a deaf person be afforded a different starting mechanism for a swim meet? Well, frankly, any swimmer can respond to the strobe light instead of the starting sound. However, the competitive swimming community did have the discussion about that at one time.

But that's a pretty simple one; it's not like the deaf person is getting something special that nobody else is allowed to use.

The PGA dove into its own controversy in the 1990s, and that discussion has come full circle. In June, Casey Martin took to the course at the Olympic Club to compete in the U.S. Open golf tournament. It was his first PGA competition in fourteen years. Back in the 1990s, Martin and the PGA tangled their way into the Supreme Court of the United States to argue about whether or not a golfer with a legitimate medical handicap should be allowed to use a cart in a professional golf tournament. Opponents said the cart would give Martin an unfair advantage, as part of golf is the labor of walking the course. Martin's supporters questioned whether walking was so vital that someone with a good enough swing should be excluded. The point about walking the course found much sympathy among everyday duffers, though pro golfers do not carry their own clubs—they have a caddy to do that for them.

In 1998, the U.S. Open came to the Olympic Club. It was Martin's best finish as a professional golfer; he placed twenty-third. In the 2012 Open, Martin shot four over on the first round, and five over for the second. His 149 missed the cut for round three by one stroke.

The cart, it seems, wasn't so much of an advantage.

Oscar Pistorius is another chapter in a long-running discussion that has no firm answer. In the end, he won a chance, and made a hell of a run. It is something to be proud of, for Pistorius, South Africa, the International Olympic Committee, and track and field in general. Is there a moral to the story? Not really; Oscar Pistorius running in the Olympics did not answer the deeper question of disability in sports—rather, his participation added to the data set, and we have a long way to go before any definitive conclusion can be asserted.

 

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I agree with your post, Tiassa, but...does everything come back to anime with you?

 

A note on storytelling

No, not everything. It would be more accurate to say that everything comes back to storytelling. My broader considerations of anime at present have something to do with the fact that I'm diving deeper into the form than I have before. In this specific case, though, it's merely coincidental; the question of will in natural selection is one that has danced in my mind for fifteen years or so.

As to storytelling, it is a fundamental aspect of human communication and experience. Facts are facts are facts. Opinions are opinions are opinions. Perspectives are perspectives are perspectives. But how facts relate to experience, thus forming opinions that build perspectives, is integral to the human endeavor. It is a fact, for instance, that gravitational acceleration on Earth equals approximately 9.8 m/s/s. What that fact means to any one person at any one time depends entirely on circumstance and experience; the perspective is determined by the story.

 

Yes, I'll be waitng to see blind people running at the 5000 meter event, armless people trying to pole vault. Then agin it might be good if they invent BIONIC ARMS AND EYES, those people would be able to get a great advantage over normal people and win every event they entered, now won't that be a hoot?

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My take on the OP? . . . .This guy is ALREADY competing with "normal" people, regardless of WHAT he does . . . depends on how one defines "normal"!!

 

Normal defined for you........

3.
Psychology .
a.
approximately average in any psychological trait, as intelligence, personality, or emotional adjustment.

b.
free from any mental disorder; sane.

4.
Biology, Medicine/Medical .
a.
free from any infection or other form of disease or malformation, or from experimental therapy or manipulation.

b.
of natural occurrence.

 

Knocking down another straw man, Buddha?

What about "He doesn't have a net advantage" is hard to understand? We're not talking about a guy running on Terminator legs here, or a guy that set world records by seconds against able-bodied opponents. We're talking about a guy whose prostheses allow him to participate with able-bodied runners in events no other double-amputee ever has. If his prostheses gave him an unfair advantage, he wouldn't be racing. But they don't, so he is.

 

Well the future holds many innovations that could and I think will make certain humans better than others with the development of biotics. Imagine in 30 years a woman competing with another who has implanted bionic muscles, now would that be fait to race against that situation? I hope you understand that I'm not against competition but unfair competition I am very much against and it could one day be that way. That day has not arrived but it will and that is my concern today , the future will be different so let us not start to allow for "devices" of any kind to be admitted to these sports or otherwise I won't be watching them any longer at all.

 

So then this is all just some non-sequitur? I mean, if it comes to pass that people can improve themselves in such ways, surely those kinds of people will be excluded from regular competition. Or some similar measure to ensure an even playing field. Why do you automatically assume that those people would be allowed to race against non-"improved" players? People who take steroids without some sort of medical condition requiring them are banned from competition, so why would that be any different?

 

So today with this mans artificial legs you don't see an advantage , why not? It is an improvement over normal legs for they are lighter and have more flexibility than normal peoples legs and muscles and they can't cramp since they have no muscles to do so.

 

I think people are missing the point, he lost his last race. Wouldn't the "unfair advantage" be constant? He would win every single time if his bionics were that advanced, but he doesnt so that means other "normal" athletes can beat him.

 

He beat other contestants in the preliminary race to advance into the quarter finals where he lost but he did advance to begin with beating others with his artifical legs.

 

So he beat some, lost to others. That sounds like a normal athlete, win some lose some.

 

That "sounds" like a normal athlete. But clearlt IAAF does not see it that way, neither do most of athletes in the world see it that way.

 

Aug. 9, 2012 10:03 AM ET

http://www.cbssports.com/olympics/s...rotest-giving-pistorius-chance-in-4x400-relay


It seems other athletes gave him support and the IAAF let him compete.

 

I am happy for "blade runner". He got to represent his country. In the olympics under certain specified rules, that I don't make. An he did a good job.
An he can probably compete in the ?disabled olympics an do better. But he got to run with "big boys"

 

again in the Disabled Olympics, go ahead and run but in competing against other athletes is not fair to him or other athletes.

 

That is with a great sadness that IAAF was pushed into accepting him to run with the other athletes. I feel total dissapointment on behalf of IAAF on this issue, that under public pressure they made an exception of this sort.