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Comment by mcphage | Hacker News Reader

You're assuming that silence on an issue is not taking a stance. But silence is a stance.

This (faulty) line of logic presumes that everyone has the information, time, ability, and interest to analyze obscure and complex topics which are often, at best, tertiary to their daily lives. In addition, political issues can be quite frustrating, not to mention socially divisive. Not everyone needs an opinion or stance on everything. It's divisive enough to demonize your opponents, but to demonize the silence of the undecided is really reaching, IMHO.

> Not everyone needs an opinion or stance on everything.

Absolutely. But what you prioritize, what you view as important enough to establish an opinion on, and what you view as beneath your concern, says a lot about who you are as a person.

I think this argument is nothing more than a dirty tactic to guilt people into supporting a cause. People are allowed to be ambivalent about things. People are allowed to recognize that they don't have enough information to form an opinion. People are even allowed not to care.

And they are allowed to be vilified for their ambivalence. Saying "I don't care" doesn't absolve you of any guilt.

Ambivalence and apathy are two very different things. Ambivalence is having mixed or contradictory ideas about something. Apathy is disinterest or lack of concern. For a lot of difficult issues, it's reasonable to be ambivalent. Sometimes it's hard not to be able to see multiple sides of an issue and understand the appeal of more than one.

People are definitely allowed to not care, but not caring is still a stance.

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