If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?

[Angrboda]

I would say that rational scrutiny could be applied to the problem of "Should I prioritize [these short term goals] at the expense of [these long term goals]?" Why can't reason be a mediating factor there?

ie. "It is reasonable to continue burning some coal to help us meet our short term energy goals, and keep our economy afloat. But (to combat climate change) we ought to aggressively reduce the amount of coal we burn and pursue other means of energy production that will produce less emissions."

When you can put numbers to this, I'll be more convinced. When you have conflicting goals, generally speaking, the more resources applied reduces the risk of failure. Now the cost of risk can be computed for the average case, but most real-world applications are novel, and non-repeating, so average costs tells us nothing. And this is only the conflict of long and short term goals. As noted, there's also rational decisions involving risk, whether I should prioritize others at the expense of myself, or versus that of future people, and whether I should defect or not defect from societal expectations and rules. Think the prisoners dilemma. Is there a rational answer to the prisoners dilemma given what we know of human nature?

Let's examine a real-world scenario. Republicans can change their message, increasing the probability that long-term, they will be able to appeal to enough voters to win elections. However, doing so will alienate the base which they need in order to win 2022 and 2024 elections. If they don't win those elections, conservative policies are dead for many years. If they don't win elections further down the line, their policies will be dead at that point. Generally speaking, the sooner you can enact policy, the more durable it is. However, failure in the long-term has a longer duration. So which course does reason dictate for Republicans? Change the message, or focus on retaining their energized base?

The rational default is to make rational short term decisions and rational long term decisions. If there is a conflict between the two, that's no reason to stop being logical. Reason can help resolve that conflict as well.

Ultimately it's a question of risk management under incomplete information. If the future were well-behaved, reason could be applied. That's not a reasonable expectation though. We could sacrifice efforts to combat climate change to keep our economy afloat, but doing so might send us over a tipping point where the human race's existence is essentially at an end, at least in terms of what we've come to expect in terms of quality of life are concerned. How much of the world's GDP justifies the loss of lives due to flooding and natural disasters now occurring. How much is a human life worth in real dollars GDP?