[brookst]

Well why do people study anything? It doesn’t have to be defended; these people are interested in this topic and therefore decided to study it.

There is no master plan; nobody allocates people to these problems based on strategic need. It’s just interesting.

[card_zero]

"This interests me" is a hidden moral judgment. Morality is all about deciding what to do next. It's right to sometimes ask a question about aimlessness. Feeling interested motivates us to ignore that question, because it's already answered by the feeling. In the stirring of interest is concealed an intuitive master plan, which says "I don't know where this leads but it feels worthwhile".

Sometimes it's right to drag those intuitive feelings into the light and force them to explain themselves, and come up with some clue about in what way futzing around with (for instance) prime numbers might contribute to all the rest of the sprawling web of things we generally value in life. But enthusiasm is a precious and wholesome thing, so people rarely question it.

[brookst]

It sounds like finding explanations for your interests is useful to you, but I don’t think that generalizes.

Many people are completely comfortable pursuing interests without needing or wanting a logical framework to explain/justify.

I enjoy cooking, in the sense that I study and try to understand and improve at a technical level. I probably could come up with a rationale for why, but I suspect it would be post hoc reasoning, so why bother?