While I think in most cases its futile to try to explain or make people understand, I feel trying to describe from the ground up, so the process behind making noise, what makes it sound the way it does and how it differs from other sonic creative activity (both in theory and process) makes it a bit more digestable than simply trying to explain how it sounds. Sort of helps demystify it to people or brings it to their level.
Main problem ultimately comes from the person you're explaining it to and their attitude towards music or even art in general. People who mostly interact with music in a casual way, like listening to car radio, while working out, seeing live performers maybe at some big festival etc... will have trouble understanding the dedication required so to speak (as I feel there is hardly a "casual" space in noise) and generally the culture around it, but they tend to be more receptive to the sonic ideas on paper or are less outright dismissive about it (how they'd treat it in practice is entirely different question haha).
Then people who are more passionate about any form of music tend to be immediately more hostile to how noise sounds as they might see it as a bastardisation/corruption of music or somehow a threat to what they're passionate about.
Among people into more "extreme" music so punks/metalheads, the idea they have of what heavy/extreme ought to be definitely plays a part as pointed out here before, and sort of creates misconception about noise. I think many people here will also see noise/industrial as a sibling of punk/metal and will try to fit similar rules and standards to is as they do to their own genre, and when it (obviously) doesn't meet their expectations and criteria for whats "correct", they'll walk away upset.
Lots of interesting talk here and I very much understand not even trying to engage the topic with certain people knowing the most common responses.
