Whats the usefulness of finding new bigger prime numbers?

“The important open questions of pure math are not really discussed outside of academia” is why i abandoned my PhD in math. What was deemed “mathematically interesting” never seemed to have an obvious application in the real world. How can you justify grants for such research? Just because a problem is hard and has no obvious solution does not imply that it is important, whether to mathematics alone or to any other discipline. How do mathematicians quantify or separate what is ‘interesting’ from what is ‘important’? Do you base your opinion solely on your peers’ opinions of interest and importance? Or is there a more objective criterion?

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