Andrew Shtulman’s fascination with how people form—and cling to—intuitive beliefs began early. “I was interested in why people believe weird things,” he says, recalling a moment from high school biology that stuck with him. “There were certain students who requested to leave the classroom whenever evolution was brought up because they came from very religious families. I just found that fascinating—that they were uninterested in even hearing what evolution was about.” What b
Robin Hanson’s path to becoming one of the most unconventional thinkers in economics began with a love of science fiction. “I wanted to understand the universe,” he recalls. “Physics seemed like the way to do that.” After earning degrees in physics and philosophy, Hanson worked as a researcher at NASA, where his focus shifted toward artificial intelligence and decision theory. “At NASA, I saw how organizations made choices—how information got distorted on its way up the chain
Ian Lustick’s journey into political science began in the turbulence of the late 1960s. “I was a freshman at Brandeis in 1965,” he recalls. “It was a time of moral upheaval—the civil rights movement, Vietnam, the Six-Day War. Everyone was searching for meaning.” For Lustick, that search quickly became political. “I was drawn to questions of authority and dissent,” he says. “Why do people obey? Why do they resist?” A turning point came when he transferred to Harvard and began
