That is the default, because most people are OK with that :-)
See that makes it kind of a weird thing for that character to have brought up then. After all why bring something up if it only applies to people who wouldn’t care by definition.
Also you don’t really explain how religious fanaticism is going to effectively be suppressed via economics. Like how you still haven’t really given any plausible way for that to happen, like what are you going to try to starve them to death if they don’t deconvert?, that wouldn’t work for a number of reasons. Also I’m not just talking about a small number of cultists. Barring unprecedented cultural changes between now and 2064 there will still be millions if not billions of people interested in maintaining oppressive religious cultures by the time the singularity rolls around. As for them dwindling out that seems unlikely given 1. their high birth rates and 2. the fact that since the outside world is so alien it will be easy to demonize. Plus they will likely become more extreme because many people will perceive this as the end times, and the prior mentioned isolation such an alien external world would cause. Not to mention they would see how religious communities that had contact with the outside invariably fell to sin, thus making the need for isolation even more important as far as they’re concerned.
That works fine though my problem with it is that it makes that whole interaction weird since there’s no reasonable way the person bringing up that information could have known that. It does kind of make things slightly weird in retrospect.
I also have some degree of issue with the whole idea of people still having “choice” in any meaningful way in the world of the powers. I mean it kind of reminds me of the entity in newcomb’s problem, if humans are utterly predictable to them, than any appearance of a choice that wasn’t made for you by the AI seems impossible, with the possible exception of sufficiently strong precommitments made presingularity. When you understand perfectly how every action will affect a human’s causal mental process, then there’s no choosing to not interfere, you are forced to choose exactly which final outcome you want. Still I could easily see this being the case in your scenario but i’m not sure it is.
As for oppressive cultures, making their lives expensive isn’t likely to do much good, starving them out wouldn’t be a good idea for really obvious reasons(PR mainly), and denying them luxuries is going to be of limited use as well. I mean when they probably view the powers as demons using subtle methods to convince them to join you is going to be pretty ineffective it would seem.
Also again while these cultures would normally change over time, the fact that the outside world is totally evil as far as their concerned is going to make them extremely insular and may make them more extreme. As for the uploads making them jealous that’s kind of laughable given they probably view them as demons or puppets of the devil anyway.
Any kind of negotiations with a culture that views you as literally the devil is probably doomed to failure. Also keep in mind even if you can get some people out of the communities, the rest of the community will only get worse via evaporative cooling: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/ Also keep in mind they will have a pretty high birthrate in all likelihood so they can replace some losses.