There are perfectly valid reasons to ask questions like this: you may be genuinely curious or confused about the issue. If something seems obviously odd to me i

There are perfectly valid reasons to ask questions like this: you may be genuinely curious or confused about the issue. If something seems obviously odd to me it usually means I'm missing some piece of information needed to understand. Having somebody explain what circumstance I'm unaware of is extremely useful and enlightening. If I ask a question like this it's to get a better feel for the problem space rather than to imply any sort of incompetence on the part of whomever I'm asking about. The real problem is that it's hard to tell the people asking questions like this out of truly interest apart from the people being undeservedly condescending. I suppose the most important thing is to phrase questions like this carefully and to be polite. I think it's also useful for the answerer not to assume bad faith unless it's very overt. A presumption of reasonableness from everyone would markedly improve discussions about projects like the Mars rover which generally contain very useful information and insight but can get side-tracked by the very issues this article talks about.