I think there is a vast difference between Gerard and Kruel, not just in the damage each has caused but also in their intellectual honesty and responsiveness to argument (null in the case of Gerard, decent in the case of Kruel, at least from my recollection).

One of the biggest online threats to rational discourse, “RationalWiki”, just reached a settlement with all but one of the eight plaintiffs suing them, and deleted the corresponding biographical entries. They are also considering pre-emptively removing all their other hit pieces—countless articles that have ruined careers, stifled research, and brought entire fields of inquiry into undeserved disrepute.

I agree this looks promising and is the reason I bought long-dated SPY calls a few weeks ago (already up by 30%). But I would feel more reassured if I felt I could understand why such an opportunity persists. What is the mental state of the person on the other end of this trade?

Can you share the spreadsheet/code on which the calculations are based?

Yeah, that makes sense, especially if combined with the feature that allows users to disagree with specific parts of the post, as Michael notes. (Though note that the disagree vote is anonymous, whereas disagreeing with a selection is public, so the two aren’t fully comparable.)

This is currently at –1 despite being a carefully reasoned post on an important topic. I wonder if the downvoter(s) would have used the disagree vote instead had it been available. (More generally, it is unclear why that button is available in comments but not in posts.)

I'm still thinking about how to hedge incase the upcoming chaos turns the market sour

Have you thought more about this? How about VIX call options?

Thanks—I understand now. I thought $855 was the price SPY would reach if the current price increased by 50%. 

If you buy a $855 Strike price call for that date and SPY increases 50% by then you get a 12x return.

I never traded options, but isn’t the return you get critically sensitive on the date before expiration by which the strike price is hit? If this happens just before expiration, my understanding is that the option is worthless: there is no value in exercising an option to buy now at some price if that happens to be the market price. More generally, it makes a big difference whether the strike price is hit one week, one month, or one year before expiration.

Are you making any implicit assumptions in this regard? It would be useful if you could make your calculations explicit.

Mmh, if there is no reason to take that particular trader seriously, but just the mere fact that his trades were salient, I don’t see why one should experience any sense of failure whatsoever for not having paid more attention to him at the time.

Still, my main point was about the reasons for taking that particular trader seriously, not the sense of failure for not having done so, and it seems like there is no substantive disagreement there.