No, inaction is inaction.

Claiming otherwise is just a roundabout way of saying "you must actively support my agenda at all times, otherwise I will consider you my enemy, even if you take a neutral stance" that political activists love to use to pressure normal people into supporting them.

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abraae 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Also consider that many people are not in the US and are not obliged to wade into US politics.

	▲	4 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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lstodd 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Inaction is a manifestation of one of two things: ignorance, or conscious decision to not act. I agree that strictly only the latter can be considered an act, while the former .. well. Not an act, but a then the question arises if an unconscious person can even be considered a person _in_relation_to_having_a_conversation_with_them_. That last point I must even more press.

I think this is what we are discussing. Please share your viewpoint on this.

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derefr 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Inaction is a manifestation of one of two things: ignorance, or conscious decision to not act.

Under which of these categories would you classify the following assertion:

> As much as I've learned about subject X, I still feel that neither I — nor most people who are already acting, for that matter — truly have enough information to take an informed stance here, as the waters are being actively clouded by propaganda campaigns, censorship, and false-flag operations by one or both sides; and I believe that acting without true knowledge can only play into someone's hand in a way that may damage what turns out to be an innocent party I would highly regret damaging, when this all shakes out a decade down the line. I find myself too knowingly ignorant to conscientiously act... yet I also do not highly prioritize gaining any more information about the situation, as I have seemingly passed the threshold where acquiring additional verifiable and objective information on the conflict is cheap enough to be worth it; gaining any further knowledge to inform my stance is too costly for someone like me, who is neither an investigative journalist, nor a historiographer, nor enmeshed in the conflict myself. So I fear I must opt out of the conflict altogether.

I find myself increasingly arriving at exactly this stance on so many subjects that other people seem to readily take stances (and allow themselves to be spurred to action) on.

I suppose I may differ from the average person in at least one way — that being that, if I were tricked into harming innocent parties, I would hold myself to account for allowing myself to be tricked, rather than externalizing blame to the party responsible for tricking me. After all, only by my learning a lesson in avoiding being manipulated, do I actually lessen the likelihood of the next innocent party coming to harm. Which is a lot more important to me, in a rule-utilitarian sense, than is avoiding social approbation for not taking a stance.

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lstodd 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I also do not highly prioritize gaining any more information about the situation

You acknowledge your ignorance and then refuse to remedy that.

This is an act. Perfectly acceptable and understandable. But what is more important it's deliberate and you accept responsibility for any and all consequences.

> I suppose I may differ from the average person in at least one way — that being that, if I were tricked into harming innocent parties, I would hold myself to account for allowing myself to be tricked, rather than externalizing blame to the party responsible for tricking me.

Very commendable. I wish more people held themselves to this standard. It is one of the foundations of learning after all.

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lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4 days ago | parent [-]

> refuse to remedy

They did not say this. They said they would not highly prioritize it. Which is, of course, reasonable: given two topics, I have little metric to prioritize learning about one over the other. I have no way to know that I am prioritizing my research adequately.

	▲	lstodd 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		We all know what deprioritize means. But this is fine. I would like to put the emphasis on doing this consciously. This is the important point. Too many people just do not think or know what introspection is.

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immibis 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Like they already said, it's either true ignorance or it's a deliberate choice of wilful ignorance - or it's a conscious decision to feign ignorance. The latter is something that a lot of people do in order to escape accountability for their beliefs, and that has to be taken into consideration, and the previous comment didn't mention that possibility.

If someone doesn't know enough about an issue to care and also doesn't know the things that would motivate them to find out more about the issue that would make them care, that is true ignorance.

If someone doesn't know about an issue and deliberately avoids exposing themselves to things that would care, then it's a deliberate choice.

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ranger_danger 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it depends on why there is inaction.

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rexpop 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There is no "neutral stance," only ignorance of bias.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937

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tremon 4 days ago | parent [-]

All rhetorical dichotomies are false.

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rexpop 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Since when does the PDP-6 implement only dichotomous state?

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tremon 3 days ago | parent [-]

I have never seen a PDP-6 in its natural habitat (only in zoos) so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty sure the PDP-6 is not a rhetorical device.

	▲	rexpop 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I feel like you didn't click the link.

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ranger_danger 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Only my opinion can be valid