The prize goes to one of my favorite bloggers (my most frequently hat-tipped, too!),
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution, who bafflingly connects a
post about the responsibilities identical twins might have to each other (the idea is here that a twin who reveals details about their genome automatically reveals the same about the twin) with a
post about swimsuit pictures.
Amazingly, this actually works. In the second post, the question is whether women who reveal their bodies are violating some duty to OTHER women not to be seen as sex objects (making both posts about externalities toward other members of a genetic group - one very specific, the other everybody having two X chromosomes).
Reassuringly, the swimsuit pictures are OK by Katja Grace, the philosophical writer of the second post:
In sum, I agree that women who look like ‘sex objects’ increase the expectation by viewers of more women being ‘sex objects’. I think this is a rational and socially useful response on the part of viewers, relative to continuing to believe in a lower rate of sex objects amongst women. I also think it is virtually certain that in any given case the women in question should go on advertising themselves as sex objects, since they clearly produce a lot of benefit for themselves and viewers that way, and the externality is likely miniscule.
Personally, I think the women in question could go quite a bit further in advertising themselves as sex objects than by just posing for swimsuit issues.
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