I'm beginning to understand why early enlightenment thinkers formed secret societies to discuss their ideas. Because if the normies found out what they actually believed, then they'd probably be outcast from their societies, or worse. Maybe there needs to be a secret handshake or something.
Personally, I don't hold anyone's personal beliefs (political or not) against them...BUT how they arrived at those beliefs and maintain them in the face of challenges to them does provide evidence for how they think, which has some relevance in predicting how they will think in other situations.
Take the very contentious issue of abortion. Whether you are for or against legal abortion, it doesn't matter to me because there are thoughtful, well-reasoned arguments that can be made for both sides. Absent any other evidence, I would assume your position on abortion is based on such arguments.
The more extreme political beliefs, right or left, that are inconsistent with the expert opinion of the vast majority of industry and academic experts in economics, science, history, ethics, foreign affairs, and military tactics would raise a big warning flag for me, because I have not been able to find anyone able to explain a way to hold those beliefs that does not require accepting vast conspiracy theories that are way too big to be even remotely feasible.
Beliefs that involve conspiracy theories are not necessarily signs of poor reasoning ability. Many things that were conspiracy theories have turned out to be true--but they were always conspiracies that were limited in scope.
The conspiracy theories that raise a red flag about the reasoning ability of those who believe them are the ones that require the conspiracy to involve so many people over such a big area that it would be impossible to keep it secret, or that require the conspirators to have such vast control over so many aspects of government and business that they could easily make anyone who tried to expose them disappear.
Take bike paths for example. There are people who oppose the construction of bike paths. I've seen at least two reasons for objecting to bike paths.
One objection I've seen raised was from people who thought that the street markings for the bike paths were ugly. They did not want ugly streets in their neighborhoods.
If someone objects to bike paths and this is their reason, all I can infer from that is that their notion of what is ugly doesn't match mine. I find a street with a bike line no more or no less ugly than one without a bike lane.
Another objection I've seen is that the purpose of bike paths is to make cities easier for people to get around in, in order to encourage more migration from rural areas to the cities, so that when the UN sends troops to take our guns away and enslave us under "Agenda 21", we'll be nicely packed in cities. A tightly packed population is easier to surround and disarm than a spread out rural population.
If someone objects to bike paths, and delaying our enslavement by the UN is their reason, I'm going to infer that they are an idiot.