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100% agree, and I'd like to draw out a thread that is highly relevant to the original title. Most damage is done by large groups of people who want simple solutions to complex situations (like, eg, characterising a debate as having precisely two well defined sides).

There are some situations in life that are genuinely complicated (eg, running the logistic system that gets food from farms to houses). I think it might be flat-out impossible to communicate a complicated solution to a large crowd. The best I've ever seen a large crowd do is pick someone who looks like they might be able to tackle the problem and then the collective accepts whatever they get - good or bad.

Realistically, people piping up with some variant of "this simple solution will fix the problem", on topics where they have no actual skin in the game, are the problem. They undermine complicated efforts to resolve situations. Moderation, balance, compromise and attempting to deal with the complexity forthrightly come together to give much better results than using silver bullets.

   characterising a debate as 
   having precisely two well 
   defined sides

I see this as a reaction to complexity: if a subject is too complicated to grasp, comprehend and communicate all relevant subtleties, a common reaction is radical simplification down to two options, with a strong preference for one side.

Screaming is useful for warning something about something that's obviously going to negatively affect them. Like walking in in front of a train, or how cheating will make them fail a course because the screaming person will be the one failing them.

When it comes to more abstract concepts, the average person will ignore the screaming lunatics and side with the person that appears sane at first glance, even if they're really the crazy ones.

>Like walking in in front of a train

Agreed.

>or how cheating will make them fail a course because the screaming person will be the one failing them.

Completely disagree. In my life, there have been plenty of people for whom this is not effective. Screaming is good for urgent events that will have immediate and serious consequences. Failing a course is a long term consequence.

Also, beyond a certain frequency, screaming loses effect. I once transferred to a school that had lots of screaming and heavy corporal punishment. It was very clear: The screaming and punishment had virtually no effect on the students. It would reduce them to tears, and once the tears were gone, the behavior continued. In my prior school the frequency of such disciplinary measures was much lower, and almost always was more effective because it was rare.

So activists who are always screaming are destined to being ignored (this being only one of the reasons).

> and year in, year out, a large number of students ignore my calm, well-argued and perfectly rational advice

I would point out that they probably remember your advice, it's just not "connected" to the part of their brains that does the driving under stress of deadline.

I find you can make a lot of true predictions by extending the "system 1/system 2 thinking" model into a complete disjunction: that everyone is, internally, one person who listens and talks and learns social mores; and then another person who acts and reacts and learns by doing; and that—other than sharing a body—these two internal people have nothing in common and you should assume that any lesson that's been imparted "through" one of them has absolutely not been imparted to the other.

I.e., if you tell someone something, they'll be able to tell you what you said, and it will affect what side of a debate they engage in in the future, but it won't affect their behavior in the slightest, except insofar as they verbally precommit to doing something in a way that then forces doing-them to do it.

And, if you get someone to, say, play a video-game simulation of some complex system that imparts a particular lesson about that system into them, then they'll still verbally argue on the "wrong" side regarding how that system works, until someone essentially forces them to sit down and have their "social mind" go over the experience their "doing mind" just had, explaining it to themselves to convince themselves. (Some people probably do this "narrating themselves observing their doing mind" by default to some degree; these people are probably measurably better at some meta-skill like learning or teaching.)

> What screaming (or the university equivalent: bad grades)

Grades are both an expensive signal, and an adjustment to an incentive gradient: Opportunities to send the signal are limited, and their use is constrained by both written and unwritten rules.

Giving someone a bad grade and a way to do better redirects whatever value they place on grades into doing what you asked. It's like a performance bonus, or cheese at the end of a maze.

Screaming, however, is nearly pure signal. A relatively cheap signal, if overused. The only expense is trading off your reputation, in exchange for immediate attention. If you're screaming at The Outgroup, you have no reputation to lose, so there's no value to the signal.

To get the people outside Planned Parenthood to listen, you'd have to incentivize them the way grades incentivize a student--or at least give an expensive signal that you're worth listening to.

people often don't do what's best for them. But that's a separate issue from trying to convince someone to join your cause. If you're representing advocacy group X and you're being melodramatic and throwing a tantrum, rather than pinpointing the issues you want to solve and proposing solutions, I'm much more likely to think that said group is composed of adult babies making childish complaints and unworthy of respect or attention. You'd be essentially leaving it to me to independently discover if there is any value in the group, rather than taking the opportunity to inform me yourself.

They are not trying to convince you to join their case. Neither group. You are unlikely to be in position to do anything about their cause and even if they convinced you, you would likely remain passive.

Both are attempting to force change or prevent change. For all values in calm rational discussion pleasant discussion, it does not bring change. It makes you pleasant, but does not really bring results where real stakes are in question.

Are bad grades actually the equivalent of screaming? Or are they a simple consequence of students' actions?

That screaming produces group identities I don't doubt, but it seems unlikely that once you've converted them into them, you will be able to convince them of much.

> ignore my calm, well-argued and perfectly rational advice

That's quite one-sided...

"An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their opinions...

...If your aim is to persuade, you have to speak the language of the other. Talking about fairness to a conservative, or morality to a liberal, fails at the starting gate. The other side just can’t hear what you are saying."

http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/02/15/how-to-persuade-the-other...

Excellent article, thank you. Thinking back to a few discussions i've had regarding the current political landscape with 'the opposition', this (albeit oversimplified) method checks out.

Thanks again. Of course Adams has his own political bias but at least he appears to be trying to bridge the gap here.

> liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality

i don't think this is a very accurate characterization. for one thing, fairness itself is a moral value. however, i do think liberals and conservatives tend to have different moral systems. in broad strokes, liberals tend to have more of a utilitarian perspective, while conservatives tend to be more deontological.

Jonathon Haidt has actually done some great scientific work on the real differences between liberals and conservatives. This is a shortish version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc There's also some more detailed and longer versions if you poke around on YouTube a bit, plus a book you can buy if you're really interested.

I don't think your characterization of either side is particularly accurate. Neither side is utilitarian, and both sides are plenty deontological, just with different rule sets. Both sides are rationalizing deeply-held instinctual beliefs, or the lack thereof.

I'm not sure Scott Adams has really grasped moral foundations theory. It explain the differences in the moral systems used by American liberals and conservatives - it does not claim that liberals lack a sense of morality.

His abortion example strikes me as particularly off-base. Again, it's not that US liberals don't care about morality. Of course liberals think murder is wrong! They just don't consider a fetus to have the moral standing of a human.

Anyway, some direct links regarding moral foundations theory (though I highly recommend Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind):

https://www.moralfoundations.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

Everyone will give you lots of advice and requirements etc, and it's completely impossible to follow even a tiny fraction of it.