He's not looking for votes, he's saying it's silly how trivial it is to get them, and also how many points he gets off of a simple LMGTFY answer (your quote), vs how few he gets off a well thought out and explained one (the kernel answer, I believe).
I don't contribute much to SO, though I do a fair bit to some other SE sites (SF, SU, DBA) and it is the same on those but there is a fairly logical explanation most of the time.
A question that requires a more detailed answer is often more specific than one that doesn't, and that more general question is going to get a wider audience (both at the time and afterwards with people finding it in searches) so will attract more votes both for itself and the responses.
The points awarded to an answer are only really relevant within the context of question it is in response to (i.e. compared to the points awarded to other responses to that question). So if you care about your total score just answer simple general questions (this is perfectly acceptable behaviour, any useful answer is helpful to the site as a whole), if on the other hand you want a little mental stimulation answer some of the more involved questions instead.
Do I think that's necessarily the right way to get people to come to your site and answer programming questions? Maybe not (no, I don't really), but it certainly does keep people coming back to the site. That and the fact that it's probably the biggest answer repository on the net.
Oh, and here's an upvote for you to show no hard feelings. I believe your general statement is correct, I'm just not sure that's what the author is going for.
What you reward, you get more of. Therefore the site will move in the direction of point collecting game players.
Doesn't particularly matter what they "should" do, what the site is designed to do, intentionally or otherwise, rightly or wrongly, is what the site will do.
Telling everyone including the people in charge not to do what they are designed to enjoy doing is basically abstinence based sex ed. "Here's something you haven't seen, it's a lot of fun, now don't do it" Good luck with that.
Lets say HN karma points were rewarded on the basis of using the F word in posts. I don't think advising people the moral high ground would be to abstain would clean the place up, if the whole purpose of the design is to encourage it. This might actually be a funny April fools joke to think about...