system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do you avoid being a crank?

With the immense popularity of the "What type of cranks does your discipline attract?" thread, I am afraid that I could be a crank myself one day. I try to avoid this by trying not to have opinions about fields in which I am not an expert in or are adjacent to mine, but I could still be a crank in my very own field.

The best thing to do, it seems, is to be humble and avoid certainty. Any other suggestions?
gpt
Fundamentally, a crank is someone who disagrees with a discipline's theoretical framework and/or methodology (in a Kuhnian sense, not in an academia is a shadowy cabal of masonic Jews sense - although there are also cranks of that flavor). So the best way to avoid being a crank is to professionalize within a given discipline, do good discipline-specific work and earn a reputation as a good scientist. Then, not only are you less likely to make bad assumptions and unfounded arguments (which is what most cranks do), but you will be able to square the less orthodox ideas you have with accepted theory, which is more right than wrong in most cases, and present them in a way that gets you taken at least somewhat seriously.