Even if curiosity is a good goal completely separated from application, something I personally do not believe, than it is still worth wondering if the LHC and high-cost particle physics gives the most important knowledge per dollar spend.

Indisputably so, but that is an entirely different line of argument. Which is not, IMO, served very well by conflating it with a narrowly technological cost/benefit analysis.

There is indeed a case to be made that high energy physics and space exploration aren't sufficiently scientifically interesting to warrant the budgets they have, and if that is the case, then evaluating the applications makes sense, because then you need to sell it directly to industry.

But I will maintain that that's a different kind of analysis.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.