My understanding is they are? And literally everything in this world is based around incentives. If you say “well you can continue to work on understanding, but your kids are going to starve” that’s not nothing.
We absolutely want to, of course. But you extinguish an industry and the systems of training that supply it. It's hard to know if letting it go that way is right.
I have a the cure for cancer. Simply kill the host. Does it work? Yes. Have you learned anything from it? No.
People like Grigori Perelman would baffle you, a mathematician who solved the Poincaré Conjecture, refused the monetary prize, field medal and continues to live a life of total recluse.
For most mathematicians their primary drive is chasing the unknown, not for anyone’s adoration, but to pursue their desire to see what lies in the beyond.