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It's my understanding that giving the action="store_true" to an argument in argparse defaults to False. When using non-double-dashed/positional arguments, the argument resorts to True (even if explicitly marked default=False).
I've attached a minimal example, but, for clarity, the relevant line is as such:
 parser.add_argument("meow", action="store_true", default=False)
I realize that this might strike some as an odd usage, and I always have the option of using "--meow," but I found it odd that a positional argument is always True, even if not specified in sys.argv.

A 'store_true' action takes 0 arguments. In effect `nargs=0`.
With an `optional` (flagged) argument, the default `False` is used if the flag is absent, and set to `True` when the flag is encountered (its Action `__call__` function is run).
A `positional` is 'encountered' whenever there are enough values to meet its `nargs`. With `nargs=0`, an empty list of strings, i.e. none, is enough. Thus such a `positional` is always found, and its `__call__` is run, setting the value to `True`.
As a result, action types like 'store_true', 'store_false', 'store_const' only make sense with `optionals`.
And I can't think of simple way of using a 'positional' to set an Namespace 'dest' to boolean values. It could be done with a custom Action, but not with the predefined ones. Or you could translate the values after parsing.