Host: Chris Mooney

Recently in New Orleans, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry held the very first CSICON—the conference dedicated to scientific inquiry and critical thinking.

The main honoree: Bill Nye the Science Guy, who was given CSI’s premiere “In Praise of Reason” award.

The next day, Point of Inquiry caught up with Nye, a guest who really needs no introduction… at least not to the thousands upon thousands of kids who saw a little show called Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Since then, Nye has has been involved in many other endeavors and television programs to improve science teaching and understanding in our country, including his latest show on Planet Green, “Stuff Happens”.

Nye is an engineer, inventor, author, comedian—a supporter of clean energy, and above all a skeptic.

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/bill_nye_in_praise_of_reason_and_skepticism/

Best interview ever!

He’s a good man, and he’s taken an inspiring lead, I think.  Oh those engineers!  It was refreshing to hear him speak candidly, and as himself rather than as “the science guy”. 

Mooney said that the US congress is divided on climate change. Observing things from Europe it looks like the US is congress is divided on pretty much everything. These same divisions can be seen on discussion boards. Even the media in America is divided along ideological lines.

No doubt this polarization of viewpoints has many reasons and a long history, but I think there is one major cause for it that gets surprisingly little attention. This is the fact that your Congress has only two major political parties. And apparently it’s quite difficult to start a new political party that gets representatives elected. I mean, you don’t even have a serious political representation for the green movement.

Don’t you think that a congress should better represent the existing diversity of political views among the people? The current situation is obviously dumbing down your political discourse, and making it seem as if every question has only two possible solutions, the democratic or the republican.

To an outsider living in a country that has a functioning parliament with many parties from different points of the political spectrum, this system seems peculiar. It’s almost like a system quasi democracy. Am I wrong?

Holger - 11 November 2011 10:53 AM

To an outsider living in a country that has a functioning parliament with many parties from different points of the political spectrum, this system seems peculiar. It’s almost like a system quasi democracy. Am I wrong?

It’s an interesting question.  I suspect our two parties include members who fall along a broader political spectrum than the larger number of parties under parliamentary system, so perhaps each might effectively be a coalition;  however, these coalitions have no power to elect the president, so this may work to reduce the power of minority interests.

Whether this is a good thing or bad thing is debatable.  It’s true that our government cripples itself in its ability to implement agendas, but then, we’ve sometimes been grateful that certain radical agendas have been crippled, such as the recent Tea Party initiatives.  Even if our government structure isn’t optimal, I’m still inclined to believe that most of our political problems lie with the dysfunctionality of the American population, rather than the structure of government.  But campaign financing issues could be a big factor too.

I think the two party system is encouraged by our voting system - ranked voting. Maybe something like range voting would be better? (see Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem)