>That's kind of cherry-picking, isn't it? 1850-1950 basically rewrote the sum of human knowledge when it comes to physics. That isn't a "baseline", it's a major breakthrough.
And we're at the end of the sigmoid curve of that breakthrough...
Exactly. So maybe it makes sense to reallocate some resources to concrete applications of what we already know, but it still isn't fair to expect basic research to make the same kind of progress today that it made in the 1900's (the decade, not the century).
And we're at the end of the sigmoid curve of that breakthrough...