For my part, my takeaway from the downvotes is this: if I respond to a question by saying RTFM, and I bother to include a link in my response, but instead of choosing to include a link to the actual FM I include a link to an etiquette guide about how not to ask dumb questions, it ought not surprise me if some folks take this as evidence that I'm being snotty rather than being helpful and appropriate.
I don't think it's fair to characterize gwern's post (or the excellent ESR article he linked to, for that matter) as simply saying RTFM. The fact is that the question(s) posed by Grey are rather layered and multifaceted, i.e.. have fairly deep explanations that xe probably isn't ready for yet. But the fact that it was all jammed together into a simple-sounding question tends to obscure that. It's a common heuristic (frequently exploited by e.g. creationists) that when you ask a simple sounding question there should be a simple sounding answer. There has to...
So, apparently appsumo is having a custom reddit bundle, a bundle meant to appeal to redditors, and 10% of the proceeds get donated. On the surface, doesn't sound _that_ interesting, except...
Take a closer look: http://appsumo.com/reddit-special-deal/ and find that the recipient of the donations will be... SENS!
I find this to be an interesting development. It wasn't the "custom transhumanist bundle" or "the custom sens bundle" but "the custom reddit bundle". Yes, "reddit" doesn't, in and of itself, count as extremely mainstream as such, but I'd say it's still an interesting development.