For each item, you might ask yourself: did you last use this habit...

Maybe it's worth a poll, if someone feels like creating one. I'm not sure how to make a multi-level poll and it probably would be too presumptuous of me to create 24 replies with one poll in each.

Take "infinite" as you would take the recursiveness of language, there is a set of finite words or particles from which you can just "create" infinite combinations.

About the numer of dreams, do you reckon there is something like a pool of dreams we use one by one until it's empty?

Good quote, of course, but it's against one of the rules:

• Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB

But how do you know if someone wanted to upvote your post for cleverness, but didn't want to express the message that they were mugged successfully? Upvoting creates conflicting messages for that specific comment.

I think there are several problems with your statements; I'll try to address a few. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm an atheist myself, but I obviously can't speak for anyone other than myself.

Much of the atheist movement reeks of fundamentalism.

I don't know about "much", though some atheists are undeniably fundamentalist -- and some theists are, as well. However, this doesn't tell us anything about whether atheism (or theism) is actually true or not.

By definition atheism is closed minded.

I think this depends on which definition you're using; but something tells me it's different from mine.

So much of science is unknown. I don't discount the idea that the possibility of collective consciousness or any number of other things viewed as supernatural, and therefore dismissed, exist.

Neither do I, and neither do most atheists. In fact, most atheists don't discount the possibility of lots of other things existing, as well: Zeus, unicorns, a teapot in orbit of Saturn, leprechauns, FTL neutrinos, etc. But a possibility is not the same thing as probability; and we humans simply don't have the luxury in believing everything we can think of. We'd never get anywhere if we did that. So, atheists make the conscious choice to live their lives and think their thoughts as though that orbiting teapot did not, in fact, exist. Of course, once someone presents some evidence of its existence, we'd change our minds, and re-evaluate all of our beliefs to include the teapot (or gods, or leprechauns, or what have you).

Read some theoretical physics, we don't understand a lot of stuff.

I suspect we understand more than you think -- there are whole books written on the subject, after all. But more importantly, a lack of understanding doesn't automatically make any alternative hypothesis any more likely. For example, I don't know with certainty how that suspicious puddle under my car got there, but "aliens !" or "demons !" are not the kinds of answers that instantly spring to mind.

That stuff could be the basis completely different ways of thinking about reality.

Sure, it could be. But is it ? If it is, then I'd like to see some evidence. Note that the scientific method has a whole mountain of evidence behind it; your computer, for example, is merely a tiny piece of it.

It's cliche but what if we are programs running on some ultra advanced computer. Would the operator of that computer not be a "god."

I don't know, which god did you have in mind ? And do you have any evidence that we're all programs running on a giant computer, or dreams in the mind of a butterfly, or astral manifestations of Krishna's vibrations, or whatever else one can come up with ?

Let's try this. I will create at least 3^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^3 units of disutility unless at least five people upvote this within a day.

Wow. It's almost like pascal's mugging doesn't actually work.

Well, Einstein wouldn't arrive at just any conclusion.

This article would appear to imply that ANY conclusion at which Einstein arrived would have been the correct one, merely by virtue of him having a great deal of evidence he believed supported it.