Comment by HDThoreaun
1 hour ago
Maybe not for you, but voters arent giving taxpayer money to mathematicians for any reason other than hopefully leveraging the understanding mathematicians create to materially advance society. The people who are just interested in understanding can do it as a hobby
It can still be a good long term investment for society even if individual researchers are primarily motivated more by understanding than application. Arguably it’s the best approach we have because reliably predicting which ideas will be fruitful is super hard
"How and whether specific mathematics might lead to improving the world (whatever that means) is usually impossible to tease out, but mathematics collectively is extremely important."
(https://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematici...)