> 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.
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.