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Listverse - 10 Brain-Breaking Scientific Concepts In This Issue... 10 Brain-Breaking Scientific Concepts 10 Museums Dedicated Solely to Mythical Creatures 10 Most Eccentric Millionaires and Billionaires More Recent Articles Search Listverse: Top 10 Lists 10 Brain-Breaking Scientific Concepts Many of us here at Listverse really enjoy messing with the heads of our readership. We know that you come here to be entertained and informed; perhaps it's just our sterling work ethic, but on some days we feel the need to give you much, much more than you bargained for. This is one of those days. So while you depend on us to provide a pleasant distraction from whatever part of the day in which you're visiting, please allow us to instead give you a MAJOR distraction from the REST of the day, and perhaps tomorrow as well. Here are ten things that are going to take awhile to get your brain around; we still haven't done it, and we write about this stuff. 10 Philosophical Zombies Have you ever been able to tell what another person is thinking? How do you know? It's one thing to suggest that we're not really capable of knowing anybody else's thoughts; it's quite another to suggest that that person may not have any thoughts for you to know. The philosophical zombie is a thought experiment, a concept used in philosophy to explore problems of consciousness as it relates to the physical world. Most philosophers agree that they don't actually exist, but here's the key concept: all of those other people you encounter in the world are like the non-player characters in a video game. They speak as if they have consciousness, but they do not. They say "ow!" if you punch them, but they feel no pain. They are simply there in order to help usher your consciousness through the world, but possess none of their own. The concept of zombies is used largely to poke holes in physicalism, which holds that there are no things other than physical things, and that anything that exists can be defined solely by its physical properties. The "conceivability argument" holds that whatever is conceivable is possible, therefore zombies are possible. Their very possibility—vastly unlikely though it may be—raises all kinds of problems with respect to the function of consciousness, among other things—the next entry in particular. 9 Qualia Qualia are, simply, the objective experiences of another. It may seem simple to state that it's impossible to know exactly what another person's experience is, but the idea of qualia (that term, by the way, is plural; the singular is "quale") goes quite a bit beyond the simplicity of that statement. For example, what is hunger? We all know what being hungry feels like, right? But how do you know that your friend Joe's experience of hunger is the same as yours? We can even describe it as "an empty, kind of rumbling feeling in your stomach". Fine—but Joe's feeling of "emptiness" could be completely different from yours as well. For that matter, consider "red". Everyone knows what red looks like, but how would you describe it to a blind person? Even if we break it down and discuss how certain light frequencies produce a color we call "red", we still have no way of knowing if Joe perceives the color red as the color you know to be, say, green. Here's where it gets very weird. A famous thought experiment on qualia concerns a woman who is raised in a black and white room, gaining all of her information about the world with black and white monitors. She studies and learns everything there is to know about the physical aspects of color and vision; wavelength frequencies, how the eyes perceive color, everything. She becomes an expert, and eventually knows literally all the factual information there is to know on these subjects. Then, one day she is released from the room and gets to actually SEE colors for the first time. Doing so, she learns something about colors that she didn't know before—but WHAT? 8 The Descriptivist Theory British philosopher John Stuart Mill, in the 19th century, set forth a theory of names that held for many decades—essentially, that the meaning of a proper name is whatever bears that name in the external world; simple enough. The problem with the theory arises when things do not exist in the external world, which would make sentences like, "Harry Potter is a great wizard" completely meaningless according to Mill. German logician Gottlob Frege challenged this view with his Descriptivist theory, which holds that the meanings—semantic contents—of names are the collections of descriptions associated with them. This makes the above sentence make sense, since the speaker and presumably listener would attach the description "character from popular culture" or "fictional boy created by J.K. Rowling" to the name "Harry Potter". It seems simple, but in philosophy of language there had not been a distinction—until Frege—between sense and reference. That is to say, there are multiple meanings associated with words as a matter of necessity—the OBJECT to which the term refers, and the WAY in which the term refers to the object. Believe it or not, descriptivist theory has had some pretty serious holes blown in it in recent decades, notably by American philosopher Saul Kripke in his book Naming and Necessity. Just one argument proposes (in a nutshell) that if information about the subject of a name is incorrect or incomplete, then a name could actually refer to a completely different person about which the known information would be more accurate; Kripke's objections only get more headache-inducing from there. 7 The Mind-Body Problem The Mind-Body problem is an aspect of Dualism, which is a philosophy that basically holds that for all systems or domains, there are always two types of things or principles—for example, good and evil, light and dark, wet and dry—and that these two things necessarily exist independently of each other, and are more or less equal in terms of their influence on the system. A Dualist view of religion believes this of God and Satan, contrasting with a Monist view (which would believe, perhaps, in only one or the other, or that we are all one consciousness) or a pluralist view (which might hold that there are many gods). The Mind-Body problem, then, is simple: what's the relationship between body and mind? If dualism is correct, then humans should be either physical or mental entities, yet we appear to have properties of both. This causes all kinds of problems that present themselves in all kinds of ways: are mental states and physical states somehow the same thing? Or do they influence each other? If so, how? What is consciousness, and if it is distinct from the physical body, can it exist OUTSIDE the physical body? What is "self"—are "you" the physical you? Or are "you" your mind? The problem that Dualists cannot reconcile is that there is no way to build a satisfactory picture of a being possessed of both a body AND a mind, which may bring you back to the concept of philosophical zombies up there. Unless the next example goes ahead and obliterates all of this thinking for you, which it might. 6 The Simulation Argument Since the release of The Matrix, we have all wondered from time to time if we could really be living in a computer simulation. We're all kind of used to that idea, and it's a fun idea to kick around. This doesn't blow our minds anymore, but the "Simulation Argument" puts it into a perspective that . . . frankly, is probably going to really freak you out, and we're sorry. You did read the title of the article, though, so we're not TOO sorry. First, though, consider the "Dream Argument". When dreaming, one doesn't usually know it; we're fully convinced of the dream's reality. In that respect, dreams are the ultimate virtual reality, and proof that our brains can be fooled into thinking that pure sensory input represents our true physical environment, when it actually does not. In fact, it's sort of impossible to tell whether you may be dreaming now—or always. Now consider this: Human beings will probably survive as a species long enough to be capable of creating computer simulations that host simulated persons with artificial intelligence. Informing the AI of its nature as a simulation would defeat the purpose—the simulation would no longer be authentic. Unless such simulations are prohibited in some way, we will almost certainly run billions of them—to study history, war, disease, culture, etc. Some, if not most, of these simulations will also develop this technology and run simulations within themselves, and on and on ad infinitum. So, which is more likely—that we are the ONE root civilization which will first develop this technology, or that we are one of the BILLIONS of simulations? It is, of course, more likely that we're one of the simulations—and if indeed it eventually comes to pass that we develop the technology to run such simulations, it is ALL BUT CERTAIN. 5 Synchronicity Synchronicity, aside from being a very good Police record, is a term coined by famous psychologist and philosopher Carl Jung. It is the concept of "meaningful coincidences" and Jung was partially inspired by a very strange event involving one of his patients. Jung had been kicking around the idea that coincidences that appear to have a causal connection are in fact manifested in some way by the consciousness of the person perceiving the coincidences. One patient was having trouble processing some subconscious trauma, and one night dreamed of an insect—a golden scarab, a large and rare type of beetle. The next day, in a session with Jung and after describing the dream, an insect bounced off the window of the study in which they sat. Jung collected it—a golden scarab, very rare for the region's climate. He released it into the room and, as the patient gathered her jaw up off the floor, proceeded to describe his theory of meaningful coincidences. The meaning of the scarab itself—the patient was familiar with its status as a totem of death and rebirth in ancient Egyptian philosophy—was symbolic of the patient's need to abandon old ways of thinking in order to progress with her treatment. The incident solidified Jung's ideas about synchronicity, and its implication that our thoughts and ideas—even subconscious ones—can have a real effect somehow on the physical world, and manifest in ways that are meaningful to us. 4 Orchestrated Objective Reduction You probably recognize by now that a main thrust of many of these concepts is an attempt to understand the nature of consciousness. The theory of Orchestrated Objective Reduction is no different, but was arrived at independently by two very smart people from two very different angles—one from mathematics (Roger Penrose, a British theoretical physicist), and one from anesthesiology (Stuart Hameroff, a University professor and anesthesiologist). They assimilated their combined research into the "Orch-OR" theory after years of working separately. The theory is an extrapolation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which revolutionized mathematics and states that "any . . . theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete". Basically, it proves the incompleteness of mathematics and of any defined system in general. Penrose took this a step further—stating that since a mathematician is a "system" and theorems like Godel's are provable by human mathematicians, "The inescapable conclusion seems to be: Mathematicians are not using a knowably sound calculation procedure in order to ascertain mathematical truth. We deduce that mathematical understanding —the means whereby mathematicians arrive at their conclusions with respect to mathematical truth —cannot be reduced to blind calculation." This means that the human brain is not merely performing calculations—like a computer but way, way faster—but doing . . . something else. Something that no computer could ever replicate, some "non-computable process" that cannot be described by an algorithm. There are not many things in science that fit this description; quantum wave function collapse is one of them, but that opens up a completely new can of worms. 3 The Uncertainty Principle Quantum physics deals with particles (or maybe they're waves) so small that even the act of observing them, or measuring them, can affect changes in what they're doing. That is the fundamental idea behind the so-called Uncertainty Principle, which was first described by Werner Heisenberg, which may answer a different question that has bothered a few of you for some time. This dual nature of quanta was proposed to help explain this. If a particle appears to be in two places at once, or acts like a wave at one point and a particle the next, or appears to pop in and out of existence—all things that are known to be par for the course at the quantum level—it may be because the act of measurement, of observation, influences what is being observed. Because of this, while it may be possible to get an accurate representation of one state of a quantum object's being (say, an electron's velocity), the means being used to achieve that measurement (say, firing a photon at it to intercept it) will affect its other properties (like its location, and mass) so that a COMPLETE picture of such an object's state of being will be impossible—those other properties become uncertain. Simple, right? 2 Eternal Return There are a number of problems with the "Big Bang" model of cosmology, not the least of which is the likelihood of a theoretical "Big Crunch" in which the expanding Universe contracts (the "oscillating universe" theory) or the ultimate heat death of the universe. One theory that eliminates all of these problems is the theory of Eternal Return—which suggests simply that there is no beginning OR end to the Universe; that it recurs, infinitely, and always has been. The theory depends upon infinite time and space, which is by no means certain. Assuming a Newtonian cosmology, it has been proven by at least one mathematician that the eternal recurrence of the Universe is a mathematical certainty, and of course the concept shows up in many religions both ancient and modern. This concept is central to the writings of Nietzsche, and has serious philosophical implications as to the nature of free will and destiny. It seems like a heavy, almost unbearable burden to be pinned to space and time, destined to repeat the entirety of our existence throughout a literal eternity—until you consider the alternative . . . 1 Lightness If the concept of a Universe with no beginning or end, in which the same events take on fixed and immovable meaning, seems heavy—then consider the philosophical concept of Lightness, which is the exact opposite. In a Universe in which there IS a beginning and there IS an end, in which everything that exists will very soon exist no more, then everything is fleeting, and nothing has meaning. Which makes this Lightness the ultimate burden to bear, in a Universe in which everything is "without weight . . . and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime . . . means nothing." The above quote is from the appropriately titled "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" by reclusive author Milan Kundera, which is an in-depth exploration of the philosophy which we are really not sure we ever want to read. However, Zen Buddhism endorses this concept—and teaches to rejoice in it. Indeed, many Eastern philosophies view recognition and acceptance of this condition as a form of perfection and enlightenment. We suppose it all depends on your personal point of view, which . . . now that we think about it, is sort of the point of all of this. The post 10 Brain-Breaking Scientific Concepts appeared first on Listverse.            Related Stories 10 Amazing Facts About DNA 10 Ridiculously Cool Natural Phenomenon 10 Shipwrecks Frozen In Time   • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • 10 Museums Dedicated Solely to Mythical Creatures During a trip to your regular, run-of-the-mill museum, you probably don't expect to bump into vampires. Nor do you prepare yourself for coming face-to-kneecap with Bigfoot—unless, that is you happen to frequent the following museums. All ten of them are dedicated to some of mankind's most enduring mythical creatures. 10 The National Leprechaun Museum Ireland The vertically challenged, gold-hoarding heroes of Irish mythology are known far and wide as a mischief-making symbol of Ireland. Leprechauns pop up in films, books, and St Patrick's Day Parades all over the world—and so it's only natural that the Irish would choose to honor this celebrated creature. The National Leprechaun Museum opened its doors in 2010, and is described as a "story-telling" tourist attraction that plays the leprechaun tale pretty straight while also making good use of a multitude of Irish myths and legends. The basics of leprechaun folklore are explained, with a few optical illusions thrown in now and then. One room features oversized furniture, helping you imagine what it's like to be little. The museum also entertains us with the stories of several naive people who tried to find leprechaun gold. 9 Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition Scotland Nessie, as she is affectionately known, has been hanging around the Scottish Highlands for quite some time now. Sightings of the apparently camera-shy monster go back as far as the sixth century A.D., when St Columba supposedly calmed the "water beast" with the awesome power of prayer. But it wasn't until the twentieth century that the legend of the monster really took hold. That was when George Spicer and his wife spotted, near Loch Ness, the nearest thing to a "dragon or prehistoric animal" they had ever seen. From that point on, letters of possible monster sightings in the area flooded the local and national press, who predictably needed a name for the monster. After applying their collective powers of thought for what must have been quite some time, they came up with the name, "Loch Ness Monster." The first photo of the creature appeared on December 6, 1933, around the same time the Secretary of State of Scotland ordered the police not to attack the creature.  Thus the legend took hold, and a cottage industry was born. An award-winning museum dedicated to Scotland's greatest champion of hide-and-seek, the Lock Ness Centre is a one-stop shop for all things Nessie. Opened over thirty years ago, the exhibition gives a great history of the various hoaxes and sightings relating to the local legend. And if you do want to keep an eye on the murky waters of Loch Ness, you could always check out the museum's Nessie-cam. 8 The Mothman Museum West Virginia During the mid to late nineteen sixties, a strange creature was rumored to be hanging around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Many people reported sightings of something that resembled a man with wings, and John Keel's 1975 book "The Mothman Prophecies" helped to further the legend of this winged beast. The Richard Gere movie of the same name didn't hurt, either. In the decades that have passed since the first sightings of the Mothman, he has reached such popularity as to be given his own festival, as well as a twelve-foot-tall statue in Point Pleasant. And across the road from the statue is the Mothman Museum. The museum features plenty of props from the movie, handwritten accounts of sightings of the monster, as well as documentaries about him. There are also occasional tours, which take eager visitors to many of the areas where the creature has been sighted. 7 The Fairy Museum California From Tinker Bell to the Sugar Plum, fairies have been at the forefront of human imagination for centuries. Sometimes playful, sometimes spiteful and generally about as small as Tom Thumb, their depiction has differed from tale to tale and culture to country. What has never dimmed, however, is our fascination with these pretty little pixies. With such a rich and varied history, it should come as no surprise that someone got the bright idea of putting practically all there is to see and know about fairies under one roof. The Fairy Museum contains artifacts and relics supposedly used by fairies, gnomes, and pixies—and it features plenty of fairy-related goodness in its gift shop, where you can buy magnetic fairy bottle necklaces, dusting wands, and dust bottles with fairy bells. You don't even have to live locally to explore the wonders of the fairy realm, either; every so often the museum goes on tour. 6 The Monroeville Zombies If one mythical creature rules the contemporary castle, it is definitely the zombie. Sure—vampires are big business, and people always love a good werewolf story now and then—but it seems that you just can't turn around without seeing a zombie movie, zombie TV show, zombie computer game, or even a zombie adaptation of a famous book ("Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" is a good example of this). So if there was ever a creepy creature destined to be eulogized in its own museum, it's the brain-loving zombie. The Monroeville Mall, in Pennsylvania, is the location of George A. Romero's seminal zombie film, "Dawn of the Dead". It is also home to Monroeville Zombies. The museum takes visitors on a whistle-stop history of the zombie in popular culture. There are props, memorabilia, life-sized zombie replicas—and, of course, a zombie gift shop. 5 Mythical Monster Museum Texas It's all well and good having museums dedicated to mythical monsters of one type or another—but what if you want a one-stop mythical-monster-shop? Presumably, that was the idea behind the Mythical Monster Museum in Scarborough Faire in Waxahachie, Texas. The property features dozens of different monster exhibits, including zombies, goblins, vampire, and werewolves. If guests struggle to handle all the creepy shenanigans on show, then expert monster hunters Sir Daniel Raptus and Miles Krane will be close by, ready and willing to slay whatever fictional creature has imagined its way inside visitors' minds. 4 International Cryptozoology Museum Portland Portland's International Cryptozoology Museum is dedicated to the cataloguing of the world's most elusive creatures. Under its roof you'll find a life-sized Bigfoot, a giant squid, an assortment of photographs and footprints, as well as some interesting pop cultural memorabilia. Founder and occasional TV personality Loren Coleman is generally on hand to answer the questions of any aspiring cryptozoologists. 3 Le Musee de Vampires Paris Perhaps no miscreant has dominated the history of myths, legends, and monster movies more than the vampire. And this limitless world of TV, films, books, poetry, and art has almost entirely been inspired by the work of one indefatigable Irishman: Bram Stoker, who created the legendary Dracula. Le Musee des Vampires (the Vampire Museum) in Paris is a small private museum that celebrates all things relating to vampires. The collection is housed in a private residence, and viewings are by appointment only—but that shouldn't discourage guests. The property is a veritable coffin, full to the brim of vampire paraphernalia. There are numerous paintings, plenty of books—and even a mummified cat. If guests are feeling a little peckish, they can also book a dinner table at the museum—a package which includes a guided tour, group games (which we can only imagine are strictly vampiric), as well as some grub. 2 Museum of Witchcraft Cornwall It isn't all that surprising that witches should be honored in some fashion. Ever since witches first entered the popular culture, people have dressed up in flowing robes in order to quote spells, worship trees, and generally dabble in the dark arts. The Cornish Museum of Witchcraft draws on local history in an area not devoid of a charm or two. The South England town of Cornwall reached its magical peak in the nineteenth century, when people would often make journeys of considerable length and difficulty to visit the region's famous white witches. Today, the museum houses the largest collection of witchcraft artifacts in the world (at least according to their website). It opened its doors in 1951, and has been in its current location in Boscastle, Cornwall, since 1960. 1 Museum of Ghosts and Fairy Tales Plzen, Czech Republic Ghosts have been scaring the living daylights out of people for centuries now. And while most of us have a good ghost tale to tell, few of us are brave enough to believe our often unreliable eyes. The Museum of Ghosts and Fairytales—located in an area famous for its inexplicable goings-on—is dedicated to such mythical creatures as water sprites, witches, dragons, and the Saracen devil. The museum is housed in the basement of what used to be a sixteenth century pub—giving it a rather creepy atmosphere indeed. The post 10 Museums Dedicated Solely to Mythical Creatures appeared first on Listverse.

          

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10 Most Eccentric Millionaires and Billionaires

Some of us are charged with ennobling ambitions; they're called saints. The rest of us just want to be rich. It's what keeps us at our desks long after business hours, what makes us fritter away our money on investment scams, blackjack tables, and lottery tickets. We dream of lives sitting poolside, worry free lives of Ferraris and penthouses. But what if you had all that already? The below list of personalities is proof that you can get really weird when you're not dreaming on a budget.

10

Jocelyn Wildenstein

A strikingly beautiful Swiss socialite, Jocelyn was introduced to art heir billionaire Alec Wildenstein by Adnan Khashoggi on his 60,000 acre Kenyan ranch. During their marriage, she began a multi-million dollar plastic surgery campaign, transforming her features into those of a big cat to please her husband. The horrifying result apparently did little to please Alec, and Jocelyn caught him in bed with a 19 year old Russian model in 1997. Jocelyn received one of the biggest divorce settlements in history; $2.5 billion with an allowance of $100 million a year for 13 years. Perhaps out of basic human decency, the judge ruled that she could not use any of this money for further surgery. Like the Duchess of Alba, she seems to have a weakness for younger men; her current beau is some 20 years her junior.

9

Robert Klark Graham

Graham was an optometrist who made his fortune inventing shatter-proof eyeglass lenses. Instead of resting on his laurels, Graham decided to embark on a mission to create a master race. In 1980, he opened the "Repository for Germinal Choice", which was intended to be a sperm bank that only took donations from Nobel Prize laureates. Unfortunately, consideration for the Nobel Prize tends to require a lifetime of work, and the elderly sperm he was collecting forced Graham to lower his standards to less accomplished men. The only contributor who became publicly known was William Shockley, who won the Nobel in Physics in 1956. Shockley was 70 at the time the Repository opened. In February 1997, at the age of 90, Graham slipped in the bathtub, knocked himself out, and drowned. The Repository fizzled out shortly thereafter. It is believed some 217 children were conceived by Graham's sperm bank, and those few who have come forward seem to display marked intelligence.

8

Mark Zuckerberg

For a guy who became a billionaire when he was barely old enough to drink, Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg is fairly normal. He's a little awkward and he dresses like it's always laundry day, but nothing too out of hand. Until 2011, when he suddenly announced that he would no longer be eating meat unless he killed it with his own two hands. Although he claimed to be "basically a vegetarian", he didn't hesitate to inform friends (via Facebook, naturally) in May of 2011 "I just killed a pig and a goat." Since 2012, the bloodthirsty billionaire has gone back to acquiring his steaks the old fashioned way… at the store.

7

Jeff Bezos

Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Bezos is worth over $20 billion dollars. From his youth, he showed a mechanical genius, earning a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. For over a decade, he has worked on privatizing spaceflight through his company Blue Origin. Last month, Bezos and an ocean exploring team recovered engines from the historic Apollo 11 mission on the bottom of the Atlantic. He is also responsible for $42 million in funding for the Clock of the Long Now, a clock designed to run for 10,000 years, to be buried deep in the Sierra Diablo Mountains on his land. By contrast, the Great Pyramid of Giza is less than 5,000 years old.

6

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart

18th Duchess of Alba

Besides being the recipient of horrifying plastic surgery, the Duchess is a testament to the power of true love. When the 85 year old Duchess, estimated to have been worth nearly $5 billion, decided to marry 61 year old Alfonso Diez Carabantes in 2011, there was a huge backlash from her family, as well as the King of Spain, Juan Carlos. To prove that wealth had nothing to do with their nuptials, the Duchess gave her six children their inheritance early—a vast fortune including estates, priceless artwork, and even the correspondence of Christopher Columbus—and completely renounced her wealth.

5

Howard Hughes

No list of the most eccentric millionaires and billionaires would be complete without crowning their king, Howard Hughes. The heir to an oil tool drilling fortune, Hughes first parlayed his wealth into movies, producing a string of blockbusters and bedding Hollywood starlets. He was also an aviation pioneer, a designer and test pilot who suffered a terrible accident when he crashed his experimental Hughes XF-11 into a Beverly Hills neighborhood. In the wake of the accident, what might have been called 'eccentricities' were amplified wildly—he spent months in a darkened screening room without bathing, relieving himself in bottles and subsisting on a diet of chocolate bars, chicken, and milk. He acquired RKO Studios the following year, but reportedly never visited as he descended into madness. He became a nomadic recluse, shuttering himself inside hotel rooms, often purchasing the properties when his demands became too outlandish for the owners. He suffered intensely from obsessive compulsive disorder and germophobia, and chronic pain from the accident left him with a crippling addiction to painkillers. He died in 1976, shriveled and unkempt. Fingerprints were required to positively identify the body.

4

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel has his fingers in a lot of pies. The co-founder of PayPal and investor in Facebook, Thiel seemingly has a license to print money. But his true passion is in philanthropy through his Thiel foundation, investing in strange, revolutionary technologies. Amongst his interests: developing artificial intelligence, human immortality, and the building of oceangoing floating cities, which he believes are necessary for the continuation of our species.

3

Robert Durst

Robert Durst is living proof that, when you have enough money, you can get away with murder. The son of real estate mogul Seymour Durst, Robert seemed to come unhinged at just 7 years old, when he witnessed his mother commit suicide, leaping from the roof of the family home. In 1982, Robert's wife Kathleen went missing. Her body was never found. In 2000, when the investigation was reopened, Robert's friend Susan Berman was found shot to death execution style in her home; it has been advanced that Berman may have had information on Kathleen's disappearance and he didn't want her to talk. Shortly thereafter, he began cross dressing. In 2001, the body parts of his elderly neighbor were found floating in Galveston Bay, Texas, and he was arrested, but posted bail and skipped town. He was arrested in Pennsylvania after trying to steal a chicken sandwich and a Band-Aid at a supermarket, despite having $37,500 in cash with him. He hired high powered defense attorney Dick DeGuerin (who had previously represented Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh). Amazingly, he was acquitted of murder, charged only with jumping bail and tampering with evidence. He served a short prison sentence, and is currently living in a townhouse in New York City, where his terrified neighbors keep a close eye on him.

2

Ingvar Kamprad

Easily the richest man on the entire list, the founder of IKEA is known for his extreme frugality. He reportedly drives a 20 year old Volvo, recycles tea bags, and steals salt and pepper packets from restaurants. His home is furnished with IKEA furniture he assembled personally, he uses public transportation, and his modest home would look at home in any suburban neighborhood. In his youth, Kamprad was tied to the pro-fascist movement sweeping Europe in the early 1940s, but the most shadowy part of his empire might be just how much of it he owns. IKEA is set up as a massively complex tax shelter and charity, little of which Kamprad "allegedly" controls. But it may be that the man who waits for after Christmas sales to buy wrapping paper is actually the richest in the entire world.

1

Clive Palmer

Australian businessman Clive Palmer has been all over the headlines lately. The owner of Mineralogy, a mining company which focuses primarily on providing iron ore to China, Palmer is known for his strange and grandiose ideas. In 2012, he spoke out against the environmental protection organization Greenpeace, claiming they were in cahoots with the American CIA to bring down the Australian mining industry. For some time, he had plans to clone a dinosaur to attract guests to his 5 star Palmer Coolum Resort. When that fell through, he commissioned over a 100 animatronic dinosaurs to be built on the resort's golf course. His most recent plan—to build a replica of the doomed Titanic cruise liner. Palmer's Titanic II, which is scheduled to arrive in 2016, is to be designed with authenticity in mind; the passengers will be separated by classes and forbidden to intermingle, and modern amenities like television will be unavailable.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. If he had a billion dollars, he would buy a pet monkey for sure.

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