Around the time I realized that I would be spending the better part of my twenties in graduate school, I saw an episode of theSimpsonsthat had an embarrassingly profound effect on me. The episode's conceit was alluringly simple: What would happen if the city of Springfield was entrusted to its smartest citizens rather than to politicians or bureaucrats? Or, in the blunt diagnosis of Julius Hibbert, a Springfield physician (and one of the city's smartest citizens), “Why do we live in a town where the smartest have no power and the stupidest run everything?” Why couldn't things be different?