It is generally considered beneficial to discover some scientific law or invent an object that is said to further the state of mankind. All inventions and scientific discovery hinges in some way on past knowledge. Since knowledge is so instrumental to any form of advancement, are all facts worth knowing?
EDIT
I've been asked to revise the question and provide a little more information, so I'd like to discuss the various questions that stem from this one. "Facts" are an incredibly broad topic, so here are the four main questions I think will help us arrive at a meaningful conclusion.
- If an event that has not yet occurred, can knowledge of that event be considered a fact? That is, is the future deterministic?
- If knowledge of some scientific principle would allow the bearer to perform evil (genocide, famine, earthquake, etc.), is that knowledge still worth knowing?
- Is there a difference between the effort required to gain a fact and the effort required to retain a fact?
- Is it possible to quantify the number of facts a person knows?