I’m curious what would disqualify this as an appropriate forum for “those kinds of questions,” and I’m not finding much in the guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) to explain it to me. Rather, it seems consistent with curiosity. In the interest of avoiding shallow dismissals, maybe you can help me understand why you’d exclude the GP’s question?

I can imagine myself asking something at a similar level about other topics that I’m fresh to, and I’d want to avoid asking unwelcome questions.