Reading Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 paper, "What Is It Like to Be a Billionaire?"

Nagel argues that these bizarre, cursed entities *are* able to experience introspection, but choose to pretend otherwise, lest they be haunted to the end of their days by the memories of their innumerable, unspeakable crimes

@pikesley it's a fucking banger after fucking banger:

I assume we all believe that billionaires have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen billionaires instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all.

Billionaires, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species).

Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited billionaire knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life.

@mawhrin @pikesley

I have actually been in the room with an excited billionaire.

Steve Ballmer is rarely in any other condition.

@mawhrin @pikesley Is this Batman's origin story? πŸ˜„
@mawhrin @pikesley @davidgerard what about technical co-flounders