My interpretation of your Gears-ness tracks well with the degree to which prior beliefs are interrelated.
Interrelatedness of prior beliefs is useful because it allows for rapid updating on limited information. If I visit another world and find that matches don't work, for example, I will begin investigating all sorts of other chemical interactions and question how the hell I'm deriving energy, as clearly oxygen doesn't work the way I think it does any more. I'll re-evaluate every related prior.
An unrelated prior belief acts like a single gear - an update on it may change the direction of itself, but doesn't give me other useful information. A highly interrelated prior belief gives me many avenues of investigation in finding what other prior beliefs were wrong, and helps me make more predictions accurately in other contexts.
A sufficiently interrelated prior has many checks on itself; and if you blank a particular belief, if it is still connected to other beliefs you should be able to derive a likely result from the beliefs connected to it.
An aside - I'd really like to give you karma for this post, but I can't figure out how to do so. Is there some limitation on giving karma?
My perspective is that religious folk have not been prepping the party. Scientists have been trying to get some instruments together to make some music, but the religious people keep grabbing guitars, smashing them, and calling it music. Then, when the music finally starts up despite all the smashed instruments, religious folks say "oh hey, that's what we were trying to do, you're welcome everybody."
As soon as something conveniently fits the religious narrative (appropriately tortured beyond its original construction), it gets incorporated. I find that frustrating, as it should instead shatter the narrative and reveal it for the useless pile of dogma that it is.
Will the machine deity require you to accept Christ as your savior before letting you become a transhuman? No? Then why the hell is that written in the bronze age book that you claim knowingly predicted this outcome?
The classic idea of heaven looks like a post-scarcity, post-death society because that's what we've always imagined would be nice. It's not divine prophecy, just something common to humanity, and we've done a lot of ignoring religious "answers" to get there. I resent that religious people would try to co-opt all this work and at this late date contemplate the idea of a digital entity with a "soul."
The improvement in human productivity would be substantial, just in terms of the time saved while not driving, not to mention the extra man-hours from people not dying in preventable collisions.
I've also been thinking that it could cause a big shakeup in the housing market, as living in suburbs would be more appealing when your hour-long commute is reading/working time instead of driving time.
You'd never get the million that way, there's a greater-than-zero chance that you'll die before making a decision.
I've recently begun listening to a few bands that are new to me - Parov Stelar, Tape Five, Caravan Palace, and Goldfish. I have found the upbeat tempo of electro-swing to be helpful when I want to improve my mood.