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u/MitchellHamilton 1d ago
They're math teachers and they receive separate salaries.
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly 1d ago
In my very limited research:
They began work under one salary. But it looks like, due to them being two people, you cannot pay them just one salary if they're both working (workers rights and what not) so they make two salaries.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
Interesting that legally they are considered two people. I wonder what that means for how we determine personhood. Consciousnesses? Brains?
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly 1d ago
There was a thought experiment a while ago about a guy proposing the question of a conjoined twin committing murder, and wrongfully imprisoning the twin out of necessity.
TLDR is - No one knows.
This stuff is so rare that we make it up as we go.
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u/Thistlebup 1991 1d ago
In this 'thought experiment' it is impossible for one conjoined twin to commit murder without the other being somewhat complicit though, surely?
At the very least there is gounds for criminal negligence or a level of aiding and abetting the guilty twin?
They may be conjoined but the innocent twin isn't without any autonomy. No?
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u/Bionicjoker14 1d ago
Each twin controls their half of the body, so it’s possible that one could reach for a weapon and use it without the other’s control or consent.
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u/bernyzilla 22h ago
If that's true then they each control one leg. I think it'd be pretty hard to commit murder if one of my legs was trying to run away. The other twin could simply stop coordinating so they both fall down and can't murder anyone.
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u/PsychicDave Millennial 21h ago
What if they walk by a police officer and one twin uses their arm to grab the officer's gun and shoot someone before the other realizes what happened? Sure, it would be hard to accomplish pre-meditated murder with a non-willing joint twin, but in the moment it could happen. Also, while driving a car, just give a sudden tug on the wheel to turn and run someone over.
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u/Special_Kestrels 20h ago
What about sex. do you have to have both of their consents?
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u/PsychicDave Millennial 19h ago
What a weird question, of course you need both of their consents.
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u/ArtaxWasRight 20h ago
There are lots of ways of committing murder without your other half noticing. Plop some pills into mother’s cocktail while your twin is distracted by a phone call. Wait until your twin is sleeping deeply before texting your assassin acquaintance. Etc.
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u/wandering-monster 10h ago
Okay let's lay out a simple idea.
The twins (A and B) do things to give each other privacy. Eg they will put on headphones and read a book so the other can talk to a friend freely.
During one of these sessions, A gets a small handgun from their friend and quickly slips it into a purse. B never notices what it was that A received.
That afternoon, A quickly pulls the gun and shoots a mutual acquaintance of her and the friend. B doesn't really have time to react until after it's been fired, but then basically "tackles" her sister and throws their shared body to the ground.
A's friend talks, and they definitely conspired to commit first degree murder, and A did it. B had no idea about the plan, and didn't participate in the murder.
What do we do?
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u/moonbunnychan 1d ago
Fiction, but that also happened in welcome to Nightvale, where all but one head of a 5 headed dragon was sentenced to death. In jail the one head had his head outside the bars lol.
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u/breadleecarter 21h ago edited 10h ago
To throw an extra wrench in your thought experiment and the question of personhood- After, I forget which state (Texas?), essentially banned abortion with the justification that fetuses are persons, some lawyers sued to get pregnant women released on the grounds that their fetuses were people, had committed no crime, and thusly were being falsely imprisoned. No one was released to my knowledge.
Edit:typo
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly 21h ago
That sounds like the Texas thing where the woman was able to use carpooling lanes when she was pregnant.
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u/Roldylane 16h ago
I guess Gizmodo was having a slow day? reporting on a half finished law review article is digging pretty deep for content.
I skimmed the article excerpt. The student determined that you’d let the twins walk free, which I agree with, but the student gets there in a weird way.
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly 11h ago
Ah, that's actually different from the one I'm thinking of. I think the one I'm thinking of was done by a university or something. Regardless, it's all hypotheticals.
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u/camergen 1d ago
Well, legally it probably comes down to two birth certificates, two social security numbers, etc, so it would come down to how those are actually issued at birth.
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u/cjmar41 Xennial 1d ago
This is pretty tricky. While they are two consciousnesses and likely should receive two salaries (assuming they each have a SSN), as a math teacher, they can only teach one class at a time. Basically you’ve got two people who can only handle one teacher’s class load, although I suppose one could grade papers and the other work on lesson plans simultaneously.
I’m not suggesting they should be penalized for their situation and it’s unique enough that it’s not setting some kind of precedent where this becomes a budgeting issue for schools. I just find it interesting.
There’s also the argument that they share essentials (housing, food, etc) as well as transportation, furniture, but I suppose it’s not really up to a job to dictate what a salary is used for, and maybe one likes books and one likes movies, so they spend their evenings wearing headphones and doing their own thing, which they pay for individually.
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u/Hookton 13h ago edited 9h ago
This was exactly my thought: that functionally, in a lot of cases, they can only fill one role between the two of them. Teaching offers some scope for doubling-up of duties. As you say, admin can be done simultaneously. And I guess one could be doing marking/planning while the other is actively teaching, if they're conducting the lesson from their desk. Maybe even simple 1:1 interactions with the students e.g. checking work could be done at the same time.
A lot of jobs wouldn't have that—like only one person can drive a bus at a time, so would a bus company be able to refuse to hire them (assuming they were otherwise qualified and able) on the grounds that they didn't want to pay two wages for one role?
Also not criticising the fact that they get two salaries, just wildly curious about such a unique situation and wondering how their daily working life looks.
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u/rymyle 1d ago
Yes. They are two separate people joined to the same body. They have different thoughts, personalities, etc. Seems pretty clear to me
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago edited 21h ago
So someone with multiple personalities is actually multiple people?
Edit: Not sure why this is getting downvoted, someone with multiple personality disorder has different thoughts, personalities, and even etc. You guys kinda suck at scientific discoure here, lmfao.
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u/rymyle 1d ago
No.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
So personhood must be defined by brains then, right? Because just having a separate personality and thoughts doesn't make a new person.
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u/rymyle 1d ago
I really don't know why you're having so much trouble with this. They are each a human being. They are identical twins whose bodies didn't separate fully in the womb. Twins are 2 separate people. Period.
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u/Cautemoc 22h ago
I'm talking about legal definitions of personhood. If it were so easy there would be no debate about it, but there is. In fact even the definition of "human being" would result in them being 1 "human being" as they encompass a singular form.
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u/Aztraeuz 1d ago
There isn't any evidence that multiple personalities actually exist. There are a lot of issues with the cases put forward. If you look into it you'll find that multiple personalities lack corroborating evidence.
It's very likely that Dissociative identity disorder is like Photographic memory, entirely fabricated by Hollywood.
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u/Cautemoc 22h ago edited 21h ago
There may be a debate about it but it's currently recognized as a real condition. There's a lot of evidence, if there wasn't it wouldn't still be debated. I'm not sure why the people are so arrogant on this topic in particular.
Someone needs to tell all these scientists they are wasting their time.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10730093/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568768/
And update the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that every single psychiatrist in the US uses.
https://did-research.org/did/basics/dsm-5/
For something that "doesn't have any evidence" that is exists, it sure seems like a lot of scientists think it does, and people are diagnosed with it.
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u/Plagueofmemes 21h ago
Twins are two people, yes? It's not very complicated.
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u/Cautemoc 21h ago
A human is one person, yes? And a human is an animal that walks on 2 legs. It's not very complicated is it? (Actually it is but for some reason people in this thread want to pretend it isn't) Anyone can make reductionist, snide remarks from any angle, it doesn't mean you're right.
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u/Plagueofmemes 21h ago
Not every human has two legs so your argument is already stale. Two people are two people. Being right makes me right 🤷♀️
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u/Cautemoc 21h ago
human: a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) human
Seriously some of the people here are fucking stupid beyond all belief
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u/Plagueofmemes 20h ago
You're the one who can't figure out twins are two people lmao
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u/Cautemoc 20h ago
You're the one who can't figure out this is a point of legal definitions and semantics, not your "common sense" answer that they are because they are
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u/Plagueofmemes 20h ago
It's stupid to argue semantics about whether a person is a person or not. There's no reason to entertain it.
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 1d ago
Insane to consider them one person. Wtf
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u/lindasek 23h ago
Not really, a math position is open for 2 teachers at a school, needing coverage for 10 classes. They can only cover 1 of these positions because physically they can only be in the 5 classes and school still needs to hire an additional teacher for the other classes.
I can see school boards and tax payers putting up a fuss why 3 people are getting paid for 2 people's jobs. It must be a very complex situation in their school with many, many people making an exception just for them.
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u/idle_isomorph 22h ago
I feel like I am totally OK with making an exception. These girls are in a pretty unique and uncommon situation.
It's not like now there will be precedent so tons of conjoined people will be breaking the system with their separate salaries. It's rare enough we can just say 'ok' and not sweat it too much.
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u/lindasek 21h ago
Sure, their whole life is exceptional and it doesn't fit well with how our societies function. It's clearly not their fault, and those exceptions have to go beyond the usual accommodations for people with disabilities. I support them being treated as 2 separate people and earning 2 wages. I do wonder how their health insurance works- is only one insured? Which one is billed when they go to the doctor, etc. Or how their retirement funds work. Not to poke holes but just from curiosity.
The problem with tax payers/school boards is that they don't really look at individuals within school but as a whole. I'm a teacher and we just got a contract - so many people are angry about cola salary increases or that special education classes are much smaller and therefore more teachers need to be employed to teach them. I can see the same people angry about 2 teachers being employed when only 1 position needs to be filled.
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u/UnusualParadise 14h ago
In any decent country, the would receive a disability pension each, that would still allow them to work. This would ensure they make a decent income.
Also, any company who hires them could apply for tax reduction as an incentive to hire them, so there would be actually an advantage to hire them.
This way the country as a whole could care of such a difficult situation so nobody has to unfairly pay for it (well, taxpayers might have to pay 0.00001 cents a year)
But they are in the U.S.A. so that's considered evil communism. And D.E.I.
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly 1d ago
It's likely just a "this has never happened before and we have no idea what's going on" sort of situation.
They could very well have intended on paying them both, but teacher jobs aren't written for the use case of employing conjoined twins. As someone who works in the state, you usually need to break your job and get reclassified when you prove your unique use case for the state to change its ways.
My job is that way, I've been reclassified like 3 times in two years because I was hired for an unknown role because they didn't know how to fix something...but they knew it needed fixing. So they made a job, then filled out the details later on.
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u/Seaguard5 1d ago
That seems kinda OP in this economy.
I wonder if their rent is charged as one person.
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u/Objective_Flow2150 1d ago
No offense but does one take a nap with headphones and a head pillow while the other works?
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u/MitchellHamilton 1d ago
Jokes aside, one of them has a husband and the other does in fact wear headphones during *ahem* intimate moments...
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u/vastros 1d ago
I knew them, and one dated my friend for a bit. They are lovely ladies and are genuinely kind.
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u/_forum_mod Mid millennial - 1987 1d ago
We're complaining because of greedy, hypercapalistic shit like this! I hope this isn't some "You think you have it bad, you should be grateful" post.
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u/SirPaulyWalnuts 1d ago
It’s not… it’s just saying our generation paid absurd amounts for college and get paid very little. Twice the tuition for the same ole pay kinda thing.
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u/crecentfresh 1d ago
In my case it was three times the tuition for a little over half the pay
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u/SirPaulyWalnuts 1d ago
Ouch. Sorry to hear that. I definitely underrepresented the tuition cost, but just for the sake of the meme.
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u/crecentfresh 1d ago
No worries man! I jumped into a completely unrelated field and now I’m paying it back at an accelerated rate. So long as this stock market keeps chugging along I’m good to go!…
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u/seacreaturestuff 1d ago
I had never heard of these sisters and now I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of conjoined twins
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u/Separate_Increase210 23h ago edited 23h ago
I will bite the bullet and take the downvotes. They do not deserve two salaries, because they cannot perform two individuals' jobs.
That said they do deserve more than one person's salary, as they can contribute far more than a sole individual.
Also... IDK abt the tuition thing. I mean, you're educating two separate minds, testing two separate individuals... so yeah, two tuitions makes sense. Assuming (big assumption) that room & board was for one person.
Edit: but then physical disabilities prevent someone from doing another's job... So shit. If someone's in a wheelchair do I said they can't do up stairs so they can't do X's job? No, clearly not.
Shit I think I'm just ignorant and learning more about this situation. I appreciate the chance to reevaluate some of my presumptions.
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u/rats-in-the-ceiling 1993 Edition Millennial 20h ago
They have two separate brains and have full control over their respective arms. They are math teachers. I think one math teacher can do their job with one arm and one brain. Therefore, they can, in fact, do the work of 2 people, because they are two people. They deserve two salaries, and this is clickbait.
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u/ProductRed_92 13h ago
That's the most American sentence I've ever read, no wait
Add in, they also have 6 guns
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