Not necessaily ignorant but definitely overconfident
History logging in controlled by some environment variables that are set in one of the files that bash reads when it starts up. Which files are read depend on how bash is started. That choice of files was changed, and the documentation took some time to catch up. Not cancelling bash history correctly when started via ssh on the first attempt is an easy mistake. The embarrassing mistakes are not checking that history was disabled and getting it wrong on an active machine instead of testing the procedure where no-one will notice a mistake.
The man page for sshd_config is over 30 pages long. There are some changes I could make to that file from memory. If I was working on a remote machine, and the version of ssh could be different from my local machine, then I would read the manual on the remote machine. A mistake might make it very difficult to log back in and fix my mistake.
Linux has dozens of ftp clients. If none of the ones I am familiar with are installed, then I would have to read the manual to do something unusual. Iptables is for setting up the firewall. The firewall is made up of many kernel modules. New features are added with new modules in most kernel releases. The syntax for an experimental module can change. Getting it wrong on the first attempt is almost certain. Getting it wrong on a remote machine is dangerous - you could easily add a rule that blocks ssh and so make the machine hard to fix by remote.
The easy way to wipe the disk on a local machine is to boot from a live CD and type 'shred /dev/sda'. On a remote machine, you need to copy all the files for a minimal operating system into a ramdisk and use the pivot root command to run shred from the ramdisk. This is something you have to practice at home until you get it right because a partial failure will prevent further remote access.
PS: Shred is not a good choice to use on an SSD. Upgrading the firmware should do the trick, but you need to pivot root into a ramdisk to ensure the firmware upgrade completes.