Remember that our ancestors living in caves during the bronze age were our mental equals. It took people untold millenia to create fire rather than just maintain it. It took a thousand years to go from bronze to steel. It took less than half a century to go from the beginning of quantum theory to a working nuclear reactor. People are still stupid, but our technological growth continues to be truly exponential.

We already rightfully put research money into all kinds of interesting areas simply because they are interesting. You can thank exactly this kind of work for making development of the covid vaccine possible. In fact i would assert that essentially all major tech developments in the last century benefeitted from or required input from basic research.

It's worth investigating these things because we don't understand them, full stop.