If you need to explain to someone, probably, those guys should not be putting money into ICOs as it is the equivalent of gambling.
BTW, if people are taking money and all they have is a pretty site and a 'whitepaper', it's a scam.
I don't agree with you. An investment is an investment, nothing more, nothing less.
If someone has money and is looking at investment options, ICO might be a good option. There was a time we didn't know about Bitcoin and couldn't invest, but if someone came and explained it to us we might. We should explain it to people and let them decide for themselves.
Fortunately there was no ICO for bitcoin and nobody could have "invested" in it.
Probably this is the main reason bitcoin is a success and all the alts are just crawling behind feeding on the remains.
Also the "whitepaper" means 0.
Nobody cares about 10 pages of fancy words. This no longer the time when visacoin would attract 100 btc of investment just for a cool name.