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Why people do not change?
A famous saying is 'You can take people out of the gutter but you can't take the gutter out of the people'. I find this saying true for 99% of people. Is there any philosopher who has written about why this is so? It seems once people pass their early teenage years, they remain the same person for the rest of their life. I was reading some biological discussion that mentioned something called 'Neural plasticity'. I think a lot of human stupidity is explained by the inability for humans to change once they reach adulthood.
My observation is that humans prefer to die rather than change their habits. For example people live unhealthy lifestyles despite being fully informed of the consequences. What evolutionary feature is responsible for this apparent 'stupidity'?
Your argument assumes that a long life is the most important value to be protected and encouraged. Some people may disagree with this view. They may think that eating as much as they want, smoking heavily and drinking copious amounts of alcohol is more valuable to them than living a "healthy" life.
Evolution produced us only to perhaps survive to age twenty, and that as hunter-gatherers and cave dwellers. We remain genetically that way, essentially wild savage animals. Cultures provide some training unto what is called "civilization". There is no guaranty of success, and the genetic basis remains. As the situation becomes more and more complex, the primate folk people become more and more anachronistic (out of place, out of time).
I think John Mill's argument about human character and how it influences most future events for that individual, comes to mind. Locke probably has some stuff about this when he talked about memory and retention of ideas. Actually one could write a book on this subject of the persistence of particular learned memories formed before a certain age since most philosophers would talk a bit about it in some way but not specifically. Since it is such an observable regularity in human behavior we might find it sprinkled throughout the culture general in everything from, sayings, songs, to drama.
Mill's argument is basically that we have free will, but that we will almost always choose to act the same way if faced with the same circumstances. The reason for this according to Mill is because of who we are, what our characters are, what beliefs, desires, and motivations we have. These factors influence our actions, and because we don't usually change the core of our person, we are fairly regular in our actions, unless we purposefully choose to act against our normal characters. The doctrine of necessity is, therefore, accurate, although Mill argues that necessity is probably too strong a term for the real situation, because it implies that an outside force, such as our environment, compels our actions whereas his argument is that our actions are compelled by our own nature. Therefore, how could it be said that we have anything but free will - we are the source of our own actions, no outside force compels us to act the way we do, surely we must be free.
The problem here, as Mill points out, is that given that the way we act is determined by our characters, it is quite important that we are our own authors, that we make our own characters, and this is really not the case. Our characters are formed as children, by our education, environment and those around us, and we have very little control over how these factors affect us; we cannot just decide to not allow an experience of burning to make us afraid of fire in the future, for example. Thus opponents of Mill could perhaps argue that our parents, our childhood experiences, our teachers, and so forth necessitate our actions. Mill was especially conscious of this argument; being the son of eminent philosopher James Mill he inherited his father's regard for philosophy and especially for Utilitarianism philosophy.
Mill acknowledges that we have little control over our characters initially, but he argues that once we come to the use of reason we have the ability to change ourselves. This is, of course, not easy, and most people will probably live out their lives without making the slightest attempt to do so, but we can do it according to Mill, and this is our free will (and perhaps free will cannot be said to be anything more than this ability). Certainly, he argues, it cannot be said that, say, our parents compel us to act in the way we do because they had a hand in forming our character, as they could not directly and deliberately act in a way that would form our character in any specific way. Their influence was indirect, and thus they really had no more hand in forming us than we ourselves did in subconsciously choosing to be affected by one experience but not another. I suppose Mill views our characters as being little more than accidents of our upbringing, which is what allows him to hold the view that we have free will, whilst still being compelled by our characters.