I'd say it was worth it. This thread was more fun than using gpg, even if the time savings is a wash.
Negatively-anticipatory subjective analysis of the effort and difficulty of a task that needs to be done and which the brain has not "task-switched" into actually doing yet. (What's this canonically described as?)
Something we all do, and which I'm personally very guilty of.
In this case it was exacerbated by "99% of PGP-encrypted security reports being bogus" (to paraphrase).
I can clearly see both sides of this coin though (security!), and I'm not at all discounting what you're saying.
It's both ridiculous and horrendous that PGP remains an operational holy grail after how many decades?
I understand where you're coming from but this bit of logic I don't get. Especially if you recognized him, then clearly it's worth spending the five minutes.
The five minutes you personally save, someone else has to pay them. The person who originally sent you the email now has to read the response, process it, send you another non-encrypted email and/or enter into a meta-debate with you. They end up mentioning it on their blog and now we're all having this meta-meta-chat about it on hacker news, wasting several man-hours on it.
Was it worth it?