Q:

How do you respond when people talk about the possibility of profiting from, rather than the exciement of, your research?

Let's say you are passionate, I mean really passionate, about your field.
However, whenever you try to share the pleasure induced by your findings or further understanding or even acknowledged works with those you love and who love you, could be your family members or lover or spouse, you always get a response such as "Oh yeah, that might make a lot of money."
What do you do if you are uncomfortable with such a response but do not know how to properly express yourself in this context without hurting them?
What would you do to make yourself more comfortable?

A:

Let's pretend that it's not an academic field that you are passionate about, but instead something like train spotting or fantasy football or competitive button collecting.  Seriously, pretend that when you are talking with non-practitioners, that every technical word that comes out of your mouth is replaced with something like "'Jaques Israel' Pink Latticino Swirl" or "1820 Georgian British Livery button." 
Would you feel upset by their disinterest then? Depending on the answer to this question, I think that there are two ways to approach the issue:

If you would still feel upset, then it's not so much that you want the people close to you to be button enthusiasts too, but that you want them to be excited for you and supportive of your enthusiasm. A way that you can address this in your relationships is by talking less about the subject that you care about, and more about your little triumphs and setbacks in pursuing it.  For example, if you are elated because you have just figured out a difficult problem, tell about your struggle and your joy, or about how it can affect your relationship with your fellow button collectors, but don't try to explain the problem or the solution.
If you would not still feel upset, then it seems that you feel there is something important about your field that means that non-practitioners should care about what is going on in it.  In this case, you again need to drop the technical vocabulary, but instead talk about how the ideas that you encounter may come to affect the world that we all live in or our understanding of it.  A personal example: some of my synthetic biology work focuses on the study of translational regulation of Sindbis replicons via calibrated flow cytometry ("1851 Goodyear Patriotic Lady Liberty Button"), but I talk about it with non-practitioners in terms of the ways it could make vaccination easier, safer, and more accessible.

I either case, in my personal experience, the core of the solution is to drop the technical language and talk about whichever human dimensions it is that you really want the other person to engage with.

