A man walks into women’s bathroom in the airport and a woman calls a guard.
Most people recognise when they have made a mistake. There is no need to make a complex conspiracy to realise the most obvious explanation.
However, there is a particular stupid which is only possible when you are smart enough to come up with complex stories, but not smart enough to use Occam’s Razor.
This kind of stupid is very common among some mathematicians (amateur and professionals alike):
To explain this, I will use an analogy from Industrial Economy:
The difference between the two, is what they produce. In the case of Factorisation, the point is to produce products efficiently. In the case of Industrial Design, the point is to produce plans and blueprints.
In mathematics, there is a similar distinction:
If you mistake one for the other, then it is like ignoring the sign on the bathroom door.
Remember: We all make mistakes.
However, when you find yourself in a such situation, do not call other people a “crank”! It is very embarrassing, on your part.
Over the years, there have been people who mistake Path Semantics and Avatar Extensions for Theorem Proving, while it is about Mathematical Language Design.
This mistake is easy to make, because mathematics as a field has been stuck for a long time in a single minded way of thinking. The bias is so strong, that when people try to bring up Mathematical Language Design, they are sometimes called names and humiliated publically.
To those people: No, it is not the people who work on Mathematical Language Design who are cranks, but you who ignored the sign on the door!
(and please stop before you make a scene!)