Why volumes are MUTED by default?

Can someone explain me WHY audio levels are MUTED BY DEFAULT in the first install (or reinstall, or distro upgrade)?

I find this is a very stupid and idiot choice.

I'm literally overloaded by friends asking me "hey, I can't hear any sound anymore after the dist upgrade or after the installation", and I have to open a shell and launch alsamixer and unmute everything and do an alsactl store to solve this STUPID THING.

I'm really interested in knowing what kind of psychological distortion lies behind a so stupid choice. Can someone help me understand this? :confused:

ps this is not a flame, I really want to understand if there is some sort of problem related to this (a newborn problem, because no other distro does this and never done in YEARS)