> The thing that gets overlooked here is this guy had to have an above average understanding of all this to even get into a position to make this mistake
You'd think so, but you'd be surprised.
> This guy was pretty far over on the right side of the bell curve when it comes to Ethereum knowledge.
No, that's not true. Even people at the beginning of the bell curve know that you don't send half a million worth of anything around without verifying first that what you're about to do, is correct. You first do that by reading through everything and double-checking. And after that, you do the thing you want to do, but with 1% of the value or less, and verify/double-check again. After that, you do what you actually wanted to do.
The ecosystem is very new, has bunch of sharp edges everywhere and there is no recourse if you do anything wrong, so going through this process is something you learn very early on.
> They fact that it happened to a guy who knew probably 95% of the esoterica he needed to know to complete the transaction successfully
This is obviously not true, as the person seems to not even have search for "How to convert X to Y" before performing something they know they might not be able to undo.