I think it's more about being open minded to strange uses. Maybe 3% of strange pure math ends up being used for something bigger? But since nobody knows what it

I think it's more about being open minded to strange uses. Maybe 3% of strange pure math ends up being used for something bigger? But since nobody knows what it'll be, it's good to be curious about all sorts of nonsense. Riemannian geometry was OBVIOUSLY absurd useless pure math sophistry, but then it turned out we lived in it. I think a lot of the work on modular forms and elliptic curves has come across that way too, despite the crypto intersection. The general idea is that, even if it's been a century or two, it's too soon to tell if something is useless, that's solid. And formalization of infinity has been useful in some practical exploration of proof systems used by humans. It might be the future of programming, who knows?