Neil deGrasse Tyson: If I Were President...

Is there some obstacle that stops him from running?

We have politicians who think all geologists are lying about the age of the earth and actually believe in a sort of divine manifest destiny.

There comes a point where merely learning to resolve our differences is (although necessary) not sufficient. Some things (such as, for example, Democracy imho) require a baseline education and scientific literacy.

You put crap into a democracy, you are going to get crap out. The process works pretty well for executing the will of the people, but it really does next to nothing as far as data sanitation goes; it simply was not designed to do that.

(On the other hand, the constitution itself was designed to be a crap-filter of sorts. Instead of just putting every single issue to a vote, the constitutions makes some things unusually hard to push through. The first amendment is basically a filter to prevent the "will of the people" from being executing if it violates certain principles (of course a strong enough "will of the people" can remove these filters).)

At the risk of being labelled as negative, I'm going to disagree. The majority of people just don't care. They don't care about politics, about science, about reason or about anything outside of their day to day lives and relationships. That's how it's supposed to be.

As it turns out, the average person isn't brilliant, anointed or blessed (this is due to the meaning of the word "average"). Saying that everyone is "brilliant in their own way" is a cop out, a platitude that's no better than saying nothing at all. Intellectual curiousity, love of learning and scientific rigor are real things, and a large number of the humans on this planet don't possess them. If you object to the idea that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is more brilliant than most, then you're in danger of losing touch with reality.

If NDT is showing any arrogance, it's in thinking that he has the ability to raise the level of public discourse. He's really smart, but apparently not smart enough to realize that no amount of education can change the basics of human nature. You can teach people how to think, but you can't make them like it.

A laughably small number of americans vote in presidential, much less local elections. And many of those voters have only the shallowest understanding of the issues being decided upon. deGrasse Tyson has a point...education may be democracy's only hope.

ASIDE: I'm noticing rampant selection bias on hn. It's important to remember that most of the people on this planet are nothing like us. Working at tech companies and hanging out at tech events it's easy to believe that everyone is as intelligent, reasonable and hard working as our family and coworkers. Most people just don't have the same love of learning and/or hacking that we do. While we value knowledge and intelligence above all, most humans don't and there's nothing wrong with that.

The extent to which really obvious pandering is effective makes me disagree somewhat. There actually are a lot of very ignorant people.

He's making a statement of goals consistent with his temperment and skill set.

He's an educator and scientist. He has knowledge, knows how to process systematic knowledge (qualifications of a scientist). He can express and explain his knowledge, and enjoys doing so (qualifications of an educator).

He's probably much less skilled and/or interested in politics, negotiating, electioneering, campaigning, and leading, all required of a politician / statesman. He may actually be able to do these things, but very likely dislikes doing them.

I know that my own preferences and skills lean similarly, though I can fill a leadership role in a pinch / emergency situation.

Arrogance need have nothing to do with it. Sounds much more like an accurate self-assessment in my book.

As to the problems we're facing: some result from ignorance, some from tactical stupidity, and yes, many from divergent / conflicting interests.

NdGT is suggesting his own ability/interest in negotiating such conflicts may be insufficient to fill a political role.