I don’t expect there is a conflict, I expect you are experiencing pressure from the norm that demands all thinking to be in service of knowing the physical world. This leads to defense of urges to value hypotheticals for themselves with claims that they are potentially useful. I think this is giving the norm too much face. The norm is poison, replacing the virtue of internal coherence in ideas with worship of the already-coherent reality.
I don’t expect there is a conflict, I expect you are experiencing pressure from the norm that demands all thinking to be in service of knowing the physical world. This leads to defense of urges to value hypotheticals for themselves with claims that they are potentially useful. I think this is giving the norm too much face. The norm is poison, replacing the virtue of internal coherence in ideas with worship of the already-coherent reality.