The problem with crackpots

1. Crackpots do not form cohesive groups.

It may seem on the surface that there is a "scientists vs the cranks" team deathmatch going on, but the cranks don't make a good team. Sure, if you have a crackpot idea, often it is only other crackpots who will try to accept it, but they probably won't understand it. The same problem that crackpots have with science, they will have with other crackpots. If they were adept at understanding complex ideas, they would take to science. Instead, they take some variable knowledge of science, apply a thick layer of interpretation and imagination, and come to their own understanding independent of the rest of the world's knowledge. The same is done with other crackpot theories. The same minimal understanding combined with maximal interpretation and imagination is applied, and one crackpot's crackpot theory becomes another crackpot's alternate crackpot theory.

Similarly, cranks tend to be poor at the other side of communication: not just understanding ideas but expressing their own ideas clearly. This may simply be due to a lack of experience with the language of accepted science; ignoring convention in theory coincides with ignored convention in verbal expression.

Trying to have crackpots collaborate is a situation where someone with some degree of misunderstanding of science and some degree of inability to communicate their ideas, shares an idea with someone else with an overstated understanding of scientific principles and a tendency to invent interpretations of what they learn. The former crackpot will express an idea that is not only poorly supported, but likely poorly expressed. The latter crackpot will treat as science the former's ideas: Either it is misunderstood and claimed to be something it is not, or it is misunderstood and claimed to be wrong. Meanwhile the first crackpot gets to see what dealing with crackpots is like for scientists: They don't get your idea, but that doesn't stop them from talking about their own interpretations or take on the idea.

As a team, the crackpots consist of individuals who are not team players.

2. Crackpots do not accept that their idea is wrong.

A key distinguishing point between scientists and crackpots is that only the former will follow the math, and allow it to change their understanding. Crackpots tend not to need math to "believe in" a theory. The importance of math is almost like a light bulb in your head, that has to be switched on, and seen before it can be believed... All it takes is once that you have an idea that seems so right that you're certain of it, but then you see that the math says something different, and then you realize that what the math says makes more sense -- only you were previously blind to the alternatives. If you never experience that, you may never know the amazing truth in it, and being told so by scientists is just like being told more science: "I'll just believe my own interpretation of it, thanks."

The problem is that if math is never used to show the validity of a crackpot theory, it will certainly never be used to show the fallacy of a crackpot theory. So, just as a theory that "makes sense" is never shown to be correct, a theory that doesn't make sense is never shown to be false. As a crackpot, I may realize a false assumption or come to an incorrect consequence of my theory, yet there's no math to back it up, so it forever "still might be true". There are other interpretations and even wilder speculation to get around any problem in logic.

It is almost as if the crackpot is waiting for final proof of either the truth or fallacy of their theory, which never comes, and as long as it never comes, they will continue believing in it.

3. Crackpots are delusional nuts.