> reprioritization of math would release a tremendous amount of human capital to do other more productive things other than posing yet another abstract puzzle which may or may not have an use in a few hundred years

We don’t know this! We might just have no more American mathematicians because folks who aren’t mathematicians don’t understand that we’re turning mathematical breakthroughs from just a couple decades ago into real, working technology.

> It's not even clear if the human race can survive until then

It’s pretty obviously clear the human race can survive for hundreds more years…

> It's not even clear if the human race can survive until then nor is it justified to spend that resource researching that far ahead instead of just when we need it.

"Climate change is going to kill everyone in 50 years so we'd better work fast if we want to burn all this coal by then"