It's irrelevant in the context of your own argument because you have not specified what you consider those costs to actually be (beyond the implicit financial dollar amounts).
I obviously do not support "advancement" at any [large] cost. But it's fallacious to extrapolate from that to not supporting it at any [small] cost, as the thrust of your argument implies.
>it seems plausible that there are diminishing returns to fundamental research, and that those returns are conditional on the funding system environment.
I think many people have concluded that the marginal ROI is negative or the system environment is prohibitively inefficient.
> Do you support "advancement" at all or any cost?
Obviously nobody supports any specific thing at any cost, yet you are still asking this question rhetorically. The implication is the inverse whereby the cost is already too high - without actually substantiating this argument.
Thus the main part of my comment asking what you're actually seeing this cost in terms of, which you didn't respond to. Focusing on merely the monetary cost would be utterly fallacious in the context of this spendthrift administration.
