It absolutely is. Because in the end it comes down to "who gets given free money to do stuff with no concrete payoff". Before 1850 or so, the answer was "nobody"; science was something done by independently wealthy weirdos, or independently wealthy weirdos served as patrons for astronomers, mathematicians and chemists the same way they did for painters and sculptors. But then you got steam engines and explosives and factories and people started saying "oh, this can make money". Then you got World War 1 and then even more World War 2, and nations got heavily into the game because they needed to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, which meant aircraft and rockets. And so now we have gigantic bureaucratic research enterprises full of performative grants and corrupt journals and everyone knows it sucks but nobody has any good ways to make it better.
...he never mentions why it's ultimately worth it.
It's worth it to him because he loves doing science.
https://lobste.rs/c/4hdhew
