I think hoping that people who enter academia will go into areas with significant practicality is a path that will lead to despair. Some people just like what

I think hoping that people who enter academia will go into areas with significant practicality is a path that will lead to despair. Some people just like what they like though. I studied computer science and really enjoyed the more abstract mathematical stuff like type theory and semantics. Probably less applicable than something like machine learning or robotics or NLP, but I like what I like. Also, someone may have already mentioned this in response to your other post, but perhaps people are interested in things like astronomy and HEP precisely because they're so far removed from common experience. That was part of my personal interest in quantum computing (and as a corollary, QM).