Heroin destroys lives, dragging not just the users, but those around them down. Similar to TBI.

If doing heroin was a spectator sport where competitors were highly paid and needed to be in peak physical condition and perform impressive feats in order to be the best at doing heroin, then this analogy might be slightly more relevant...

And in that case, if an "extreme heroin" player published a mathematics paper, I still would be impressed.

> then this analogy might be slightly more relevant

Agreed, football is worse: we actively encourage and reward modern day gladiatorial combat such that otherwise brilliant people feel the need to participate. NFL players publishing papers and having successful academic careers afterwards are not the norm.

You are being incredibly hyperbolic. There are issues with football, but equating the sport to actual bloodsport (or heroin use... really?) is a ridiculous stretch.

It really doesn't do anything to further the discourse.

^ Agree.

I think that pivoting the framing from a known known (look at these guys who have brain damage and are killing themselves) to a known unknown (have we really accounted for all the variance?) is risky, because you're then flirting with confirmation bias.

I think that if one guy wants to fly through a canyon in a wingsuit, it's one matter. But when you have an entire nation cheering this behavior on, it starts to make us introspect and say... wait.. exactly how hedonistic are we? Is this really the kind of behavior we want to teach our children? The reductio is that it could lead to us selecting against ourselves, as a species. Go Team!