[capulcu]

Reminds me of a security hacker's refusal to work on a project intercepting Whatsapp messages of Saudi Arabian telco customers. http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/

This is something I think about a lot, too. But recently, I am thinking that ethics can't survive in a non-ethical world - especially in one that doesn't respect ethics.

It's very prevalent, too, not just in engineering. To give a different example: does Adriana Lima stop and think about what Victoria's Secret does to body image issues for girls? That the mass-media promotion of a model's figure gives a too high standard for beauty? No. She takes the money and models. Not only that - but we love her for it. She is insanely popular.

Now in such a world - if given the chance to model, wouldn't you? Even if you are morally against promoting 38000$ clothing items in a world where there are still starving children, even though you think it's absurd that all magazines have skinny female figures on their covers -- if given a chance to make a lot of money by modeling, wouldn't you take it?

By denying yourself the opportunity, you are 1) extremely unlikely to change the system, because you're not so unique that without you things wouldn't work and 2) not even getting appreciated for the ethical choice you made.

[mahyarm]

There are plenty of people with Victoria Secret levels of body fat percentage walking around in Asia. They are the norm by far, probably over %80 of the under-35 population there are that skinny or even skinnier, and it's not because they are starving. It's not Adriana Lima's fault that we live in a food culture and industry that pushes toward obesity. You don't have to be anorexic or bulimic to be that skinny, but you'll have to be constantly telling no to almost everyone to trying to invite you to eat more and more crap.

A coworker in a previous job was asked by her Korean coworkers at LG to take pictures of how fat people got in new jersey because they, never, ever saw people get that fat in Korea.

[contingencies]

Let's be honest here, Korean food's not that exciting - it can be good, sure, but there's not a lot of variety. Plus, if you eat too much of their chilli and vinegar dominated kimchi, you wind up with stomach cancer. ("It is the leading cancer type in Korea, with 20.8% of malignant neoplasms.") That probably contributes to less fat people. Also, they're more image-centric than Hollywood! (I used to work above a Korean plastic surgery in Hollywood, it was a veritable production line)

[mahyarm]

I think the stomach cancer comes from the sodium actually, the Japanese have a similar problem. But you have to look at these causes of death on an even basis too. Cancer is a higher cause of death in Korea than heart disease, that's fairly impressive!

[contingencies]

IIRC most of Asia / developing countries without inactive lifestyles, overzealous meat consumption and fatty/sugary modern pretend-foods don't have issues with heart disease.