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I'm having some difficulty thinking of a scenario where, given the choice, I'd trade off authentication for speed. The information would have to be of so little value that it doesn't matter if the remote party gets what I send or if I get what the remote party sends.

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You're assuming that the probability of interception is 100% In reality, the probability of interception is miniscule, but the probability of speed is 100%.

The probability of interception is massively higher than miniscule, see the recent wide scale hijacking of Chinese traffic to DDOS Github or ISPs inserting ads and tracking into responses.

These types of attacks have been hypothetical for a long time, but we're starting to see real world impacts of not using https, and they aren't trivial.

I made an events site for my city:

http://www.tithess.gr/

The Greek government inserting ads into that site is very low on my list of concerns, but the additional 200-400ms on the first page load is much higher up.

Am I correct in understanding your point as "there can be no conceivable case where two fewer TCP roundtrips would be worth the speed gain over the decreased security"?

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