See we know the powers didn’t just drop knowledge into Grant’s mind because he’d be okay with it. The whole reason he found out about it was because someone else was bringing up the fact that the powers are doing this to presumably everybody by default. I just wouldn’t make sense for them to bring it up unless it was default.
Also the powers clearly seem to care about human autonomy, otherwise they would just use super persuasion to get everybody to agree to live the best possible human life.
Plus how exactly is economics in a post scarcity world going to stop religious fanaticism?
Hmm, there are two problems (though as a whole it’s the best utopia I’ve ever seen conceived) I have with this utopia.
Firstly the default is for the powers to just insert the truth into your mind with consent or even letting you know, which I imagine many people like myself would find pretty terrifying, even if it’s done in a way that we ourselves might have willingly chosen to get implemented. In fact I imagine most non-transhumanists would have pretty strong preferences against self modification and having their minds tampered with.
Secondly is the fact that I really doubt the portrayed efficacy of many of the safeguards against humans making things shitty. For instance I really doubt many hardcore social conservatives would want to even get uploaded in the first place and given their insular nature, external social pressure wouldn’t do much to get them to change, if anything it would feed their persecution complex.
A lot of the safeguards against what you call the culture trap, kind of seem like they would only work on people who were already somewhat socially progressive.
I just don’t actually think there’s any solution that preserves human autonomy that will eliminate oppressive insular cultures. Plus the more alien the outside world becomes, the easier it will be for it to be demonized. Even if you’re forcefully inserting the truth into their minds they will just end up saying that’s the voice of the devil or something in order to get people to not listen to it, the only solution is to just forcefully change their beliefs but that would totally mean dropping the idea of human autonomy.