I suppose that you could joke about the Weird Ideas and signal you didn’t take yourself too seriously to them, which might put them at ease if it convinces them that you aren’t implying you’re better than they are, and so their status isn’t being threatened… but that might kind of defeat the purpose by not doing anything to reduce the bias against non-conventional ideas, I’m not very good at modeling people.
I suppose that you could joke about the Weird Ideas and signal you didn’t take yourself too seriously to them, which might put them at ease if it convinces them that you aren’t implying you’re better than they are, and so their status isn’t being threatened… but that might kind of defeat the purpose by not doing anything to reduce the bias against non-conventional ideas, I’m not very good at modeling people.