"This is one of the more bizarre articles I've read in a looong time, but not necessarily for the details (which are admittedly bizarre), but more because it's unclear to me why this article exists."

"The article title suggests that it's about how an 'expert' on judgment is still capable of making bad decisions. This led me to believe the rest of the article would expand on this concept, and perhaps offer some insights on the human condition or how all of us are fallible, etc. But it doesn't do that at all, it's more like an extremely detailed laundry list of unpleasant human behavior, but no real attempt at analysis. The punchline is 'Hay remains mystified about what the women really wanted from him.' Um, ok? And you're publicly revealing all this why?"

Writes jeremias at Metafilter, about "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge/A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?," which we've been talking about here and which I can't stop thinking about.

Answering jeremias's question is jam jam:

Since you won't say it jeremias, I will.

We are seeing this right now because so many people are so uncomfortable about the things women are saying about powerful men, and they are DESPERATE for any excuse at all to disbelieve those women.

And this story will give them that at an unconscious level.

Suddenly, "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge" pairs up with that other article we've been talking about,"The Case of Al Franken/A close look at the accusations against the former senator."

"Over the next four years, the [Harvard] law professor would be drawn into a 'campaign of fraud, extortion, and false accusations,' as one of his lawyers would later say in legal proceedings."

"At one point, [Prof. Bruce] Hay’s family would be left suddenly homeless. At another, owing to what his lawyer has described as the 'weaponiz[ation] of the university’s Title IX machinery against Hay' he would find himself indefinitely suspended from his job. He would accrue over $300,000 in legal bills with no end to the litigation in sight. 'Maria-Pia and Mischa want money,' Hay told me last summer, 'but only for the sake of squeezing it out of people — it’s the exertion of power'... When we met for pizza at his Sunday-night hangout one evening, he wondered aloud whether he might be 'on the spectrum.' That could help explain why warning signs that might have been obvious to many managed to elude a man who teaches a Harvard Law class on 'Judgment and Decision-Making,' which analyzes those elements of human nature that allow us to delude ourselves and make terrible decisions. 'Of course, now I feel slightly ridiculous teaching it,' Hay told me, 'given how easily I let myself be taken advantage of.'"

This is one of the craziest stories I have ever read: "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge/A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?" (New York Magazine). I have no idea how accurate this one-sided account is, but my inclination to feel sorry for Hay went to hell halfway through the story. I am not going to try to summarize. Please read it for yourself. It's really strange, but I warn you, it's annoying. When he got into this Maria-Pia and Mischa intrigue, Hay was living with his children and his ex-wife, and the suffering visited on the professor's family is mind-blowing. I'll just quote the sentence where my sympathy for Hay took flight:

After her confrontation with the women, [Hays's ex-wife Jennifer] Zacks realized she had to be more active in protecting herself and her children — especially after Hay told her about Shuman and Haider’s various proposals for selling their home and Zacks found on his desk an application for a $500,000 home-equity loan.