Think about going back in time. You think you'd be so superior to these people because you have however many hundreds of years of knowledge over them. But do you? Doubtful. How does an internal combustion engine work? I don't know. How is electricity produced? I have only the vaguest notion. How does plumbing work? How is plastic made? How is sound recorded? There are a few things I could help them with, depending on how much I've memorized from my science classes.

What it comes down to is that the majority of us know very little about the technology we use in our every day lives. Yet we act as though we do, and we're ready to tell researchers what to do and how to do it. We'll fund NASA and other types of organizations/r&d as we see fit, even though we really have no idea what it is they do or how important the discoveries they make may be.