Literally brings me tears to hear these words from my hero. There absolutely is a reason to accelerate. We have cancer that gives you and your loved ones pain. We have lack of energy, food, and basic medication in half of the population. We have serious climate / ocean life crisis, economic / political crisis, and other billion problems that needs smart peoples attention. But most importantly there are not that many smart people. We need more, but we have population crisis on all developed country. And people want to slow down, its all fine, because *they* live in comfort? Do mathematicians want to better understand universe to ultimately contribute to real world crisis or not?