Good response. I think this is the clearest way to explain to people why researching X is important, the benefits to humanity are almost always in side effects of any research, development and engineering feats: The techniques, understanding and technology required to _attempt_ to figure out or achieve X are usually far more valuable than X itself and are often not known ahead of time, but can be invaluable to the future of humanity.

The problem is researchers are far more likely to express their interested in X to the public - quite right - since that must be their passion for the significant focus required to follow that path. This is what the public find so unintuitive, we need to focus on X to benefit from Y, although we don't know what Y is, but it has the potential to be far more useful than anything more direct.

Reminds me of the more literal explanation in a letter by Ernst Stuhlinger at NASA in response to a similar question:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/10/26/even...