You seem to have some funny interpretations of the words "think" and "believe". This is hindering our ability to communicate with one another. For instance, I interpreted your first question as a petty insult. Thus, my answer might not make any sense, as I'm not entirely certain of the definitions you are using.

Ok. Now, my question to you is simply: do you believe in this or do you think that?

I would say that both thought and belief are fundamental in their own ways. If you have no thought, then you cannot reason how the world might behave, and therefore have nothing to believe in. If you have no belief... none whatsoever... then you cannot believe what your own senses tell you, and you have no foundation upon which to reason. This principle expands further to not being able to believe anything which might confirm or deny the results of your reasoning. Thus, a being without belief is unable to reason, and a being without reason lacks belief. That is what I think.

... one can believe in anything at all

There are a great many things out there that people believe in. Some exist in an absolute sense, while others do not. This is the quest of science, to ascertain the difference. There is no clear indication if this is a finite task.

(This is also why fiction such as The Matrix, or certain Star Trek episodes featuring the holodeck have such appeal. They ask us to re-examine our most basic beliefs, if only for a moment. If one can suspend disbelief in those contexts, anything is possible. In the context of fiction, that is quite desirable.)

I hold, though, that all logic must be based upon fundamental axioms. If the axioms we choose are true, and our logic is sound, then we may deduce further truth. If our axioms are false, then we have no assurance that we will gain truth through reason. Any attempt to build a framework of reason that is not built upon axioms will either be tautological (hidden axioms), or self-contradictory. Thus correct belief with thought leads to further correct belief. No amount of thought will lead to truth if our core beliefs are wrong. That is what I believe.

As a programmer I laugh when people want to simply throw more hardware at a problem when software is really the key. I do agree that there is some point where simulation of large physical processes at an atomic level will be a reality, and not to far off.

Which makes it an emergent property. It is a property of the interaction between the fermions (Helium-3) and not a property of the fermions.

What a witty retort. Care to elaborate, or was my statement merely uncomfortable?

Belief is for those that lack knowledge.

Not so.

Start with fundamental belief. "I think, therefore I am." This is a rational belief, but it is only a belief. The universe would need to be extraordinarily weird for this one to not be true. But it is still a belief.

Every scientific "fact" is a belief. These are educated beliefs, based upon scientific principles, observations, and methods. Yet they are still beliefs. Various scientific beliefs are challenged and changed on a daily basis. Knowledge of what science says still requires belief in those ideas. Action based on these beliefs is still a form of faith, even if it is entirely non-religious.

This article itself is on the cutting edge of doubting particular scientific ideas. It is a weakened belief in the status quo, and an exploration of an alternate theory. That's how science works.

Science cannot be separated from belief. To do so becomes fanaticism or fiction, and ceases to be science.

I don't believe there is even a useful definition of soul that would lead to testable hypotheses.

Correct. I.E. It doesn't, except as a story for the weak-minded who can't handle the truth.

I want the truth!
You can't handle the truth!

A religious person is foolish for believing in something they can't see that doesn't help them consistently and accurately predict things they can observe.

Considering that we have evolved all these different sensory organs to help us survive, I'm sure that if perceiving a 4th dimension granted any biological advantage at all, we would be able to perceive it. Sorry to be anthropic about it but my field is biology not physics, lol.

It doesn't mean we live in a 27 dimension manifold.

Doesn't mean we don't. ;-)

All direct observations to date point to a 3D universe.

Ummm ... hang on a second. Won't any direct observation we make as 3D critters point to a 3D universe? Isn't that sort of inherent to us being only able to perceive 3D?

I'm not sure how we'd do any direct observations in any other dimensions. (Honestly, not a flame, I'm genuinely puzzled by how we could see anything else and every now and then something like this hurts my head)

No it isn't. Another example of an emergent property is the super fluidity of liquid helium. It is a property of a system that is not a property of its components nor immediately obvious from the properties of those components, but that arises when a large number of those parts interact as a system.

Just because you don't understand a word does not make it technobabble. Jargon yes, babble no.

The soul is a metaphor, not a physical object. So it exists, the way any other metaphor exists.

[...]

Emergent properties are phenomena which are a product of the characteristics of the set of entities which are interacting with each other and the structure of that interaction.

A water molecule doesn't have a snowflake hiding in it, nor does it have some quality of "snowflakeness".

Take a bunch of water molecules, have them interact with each other in the right environment, and you get snowflakes.

No technobabble needed.

[...] Your brain is a machine. It can be understood, decompiled, analyzed, improved and reimplemented. You're already an AI running on appropriate (and at some point in future becoming outdated) hardware.

Unless you believe in souls. Do you believe in souls?

[...]

Peer reviewers can't check everything, especially when the conclusion results from elaborate analysis of data from complex apparatus. Sometimes you detect bonehead mistakes, but usually your focus is more on clarity than correctness: do the authors explain their methods and reasoning in enough detail that someone else can repeat the research?

Absolutely yes! It is the physician's responsibility to avoid basing treatments on results that haven't been independently confirmed. It is the researcher's responsibility to publish: how else will you get that independent confirmation?

Other researchers need to know what they should attempt to confirm or falsify.

We're talking about the science of the journals here. This is raw "source code", checked to some degree, but not debugged. The debugging takes place in the community: if you don't publish, your results will never get properly debugged.