Yes. On the extreme end, there’s a finite amount of useful work that can be done before the heat death of the universe. An energy budget the size of the combined output of all power stations on the planet is much smaller than that, but also too much. At a more realistic scale, human knowledge is only valuable in so far as it improves the human condition in some way, now or in the future. Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and we only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a necessary one.
Even if we accept that pure physics knowledge is a worthy goal in itself, diving straight into another megaproject isn’t necessarily the best way forward. Maybe it’s more valuable right now to find uses for the great theoretical leaps we’ve already made, for instance. Or maybe we should be focussing on training theorists so that we can have a better idea of what the next piece of giant scientific equipment needs to be. Or maybe we need to raise the global literacy rate so that we have more scientists available.
