I certainly agree that it's far from the most offensive way of encouraging someone to "update on how little they really know."
I sympathize with the difficulty of being asked simple-sounding questions that conceal a lot of complexity. And I agree with you that this is often maliciously exploited. Of course, it is also often the genuine consequence of being new to and interested in a subject.
I'm intrigued by the notion that Grey's question can be so obvious that he should have obtained an answer via a simple web search without wasting anyone's time here (which is what I understood gwern to be saying) and at the same time so layered and multifaceted that Grey probably isn't ready for the answer. I suspect I'll have to think about that some more before I fully understand it.
I didn't get the impression that gwern was implying that it could be solved quickly and easily with a google search, so much as that it's the kind of question you are better off flexing your intellectual muscles a bit and at least trying fairly hard to find an answer before offering an opinion, given the high probability that lots of smart cryonics advocates have had a similar experience already.
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.