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Hypothesis: People make the best decisions they can. When deciding, their short-term interests (the ones that have an immediate impact on them) usually outweigh their long-term interests.
I suspect that one's reasonably uncontroversial.
I wonder if you could say this, though: People make the best decisions they can. Under extreme circumstances people could be persuaded to think about their best interests in terms of things that will happen in their lifetime. They might possibly think about it terms of their children, and maybe maybe in terms of their grandchildren.
People who voluntarily think at the century or millenia level - like Jim Hansen or Professor Vaclav Smil - are extremely rare. What makes them different?
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Well, thinking that long term is something we aren't built to do. Human brains were shaped for life on the west African plains, and in that context the most important things to plan for are probably:
1. What to eat for the next few days.
2. When to move to a different area (i.e. following food with seasonal change).
3. Kids (and maybe grandkids).
So, planning focused beyond your immediate family/tribe and the next couple of generations is not going to be selected for.
And that means you have to really work to think in bigger terms. I think it's something you can train yourself to do, but by default we seem to drop back to the immediate.
That's all a bunch of opinion, though (I like to think I have some pretty well informed ones, but that's as far as I'll go). I think most of my reading in these areas has come from Stumbling on Happiness, Collapse, and various readings on how the brain works (Pinker, etc).
(edit for typos)
I would theorize that individuals who can spend great life effort on planning for the next 100 or 1000 years already have a pretty good handle on their immediate needs. They can afford the luxury of 100 year planning. Which by itself is an interesting point...
What if certain members of a society could be selected at birth to be 100 year thinkers? All immediate material needs of these individuals would be covered by the State. While I am certain you can find a number of practical flaws, it is an interesting concept. Perhaps you can create 100 year thinkers by insuring they don't need to worry about things in this lifetime.
>>Hypothesis: People make the best decisions they can. <<
Social psychology would probably argue that is false, and paint a picture of people as stupid and irrational and crap at making decisions.
Unless you meant it as a meaningless truism.
I meant: People make the best decisions they CAN. As in, within their capabilities.
I shall pull out the Social Psyc text book that's currently propping up my computer monitor, and check for some readings about this.
You lost me at "People make the best decisions they can" - most of the time I don't think they do.
I think that most of the time people make no decision whatever, and when they do make decisions they usually take the easiest option regardless of how 'good' that is.
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