If you discount ideas based on them being socially unacceptable or hard to conceive of, then you are limiting your reality to what the powerful will class as palatable for the proles. An open mind isn't just a nice thing to have so we can progress; it is a defence against evil, which has no such policy limits. It will do the most outrageously despicable and unthinkable things, so you have better be ready to match it.

Pics from Oxford, the notorious failed academic brand.