Way before bots/LLM, I disciplined myself (most of the time) to write email with "in brief" at the top, followed by "Details".
"In brief: Can you bring a dozen brownies to the noon lunch tomorrow?
Details: Dessert plans fell through. Your brownies are the best, and you owe me..."
This structure is liberating for me. I can distill what I want/need into something brief and even brusque, knowing that people will read on if the need justification. It also makes me clarify what I want. Probably not appropriate if I'm too far down the totem pole from the addressee.
The scissor effect can't apply to an individual. And I suppose if most everyone falls on one side of the question, even with lots of passion, there's no scissor.
But I'm arguing (SSC may not be) that effective scissor statements create both passion and tunnel vision in people, even one at a time. And so when there are people with passion and tunnel vision on both sides, voilà, scissor. (It's a little bit like "drunken mob". You can't have a mob with just one person, but each person, arguably, gets drunk on their own.)
I'm with you. We see in this discussion that it's difficult even to raise some potential scissors as examples without a lot of commenters falling into them.
SSC's point is not "X is a near-universal scissor", it's that there's a scissor or ten for almost everyone, and that some scissors are likely to ensnare a lot of people.
If you've never found yourself arguing vehemently and extensively, to the death, about something and sometime later wondered what that was about, you may be a counterexample, someone who is scissor-immune.
Yes, and a lot of commenters are falling into the scissor, metaphorically, arguing that your analogy to the Dreyfuss case is wrong because, damn it, Dreyfuss was {innocent, guilty}.
I think that's in part because, if you're societally oppressed, you're less buffered, so you become understandably hyper-vigilant about what might be used against you. E.g a if you're rich, you may not like a certain tax law change passed out of the Senate committee, but you still have chances to reduce its impact by lobbying for the full Senate vote, the House vote, Presidential veto, IRS implementing regulations, and how your tax attorney goes to bat for you. If you're poor and dependent on certain subsidies which the Senate committee has voted to eliminate, you have fewer points of leverage between you and doom (and "doom" is much worse for you.)
All that said, I think the interesting thing about a scissor statement is that it generates tunnel vision in both sides at the same time that it's generating great passion in both sides. Losing = death, death is imminent, so this is the hill you've got to die on.
But losing is generally not death and complete losing is generally a few more steps away, even if you're on the "oppressed" side I sketched out above.
Consider the Kavanaugh confirmation. I was against it (disclaimer: I'm not personally the target of what he's likely to cause through his votes, so...). But his confirmation is not the last word - a battle not the war. Other Justices will be nominated. Legislation could increase the number of court seats. Grassroots efforts through the states can make Federal decisions less important. He might even be impeached.
And there may be positive consequences in the long term. The spectacle of the hearings may have strengthened long term support for "my side".
If you've fallen into the scissor, you see it as the war, and with no possibility of good consequences to losing.
You also -- just as in the story -- see the other side as a monolith. That works against perceiving their humanity, and it works against good negotiation tactics. Some Senators voted for Kavanaugh enthusiastically; everything about him was good. Some Senators held their noses and voted for him, because they feared their base or like some of Kavanaugh's positions. Some pro-K Senators may even have collected significant IOUs which may become handy later. Not seeing those possibilities leads to myopic strategy.
(And please please please don't fall into the scissor re the Kavanaugh fight if you respond to this comment.)
"In brief: Can you bring a dozen brownies to the noon lunch tomorrow?
Details: Dessert plans fell through. Your brownies are the best, and you owe me..."
This structure is liberating for me. I can distill what I want/need into something brief and even brusque, knowing that people will read on if the need justification. It also makes me clarify what I want. Probably not appropriate if I'm too far down the totem pole from the addressee.