What are the financial disadvantages of curiosity?

Answer 1

If you want to know something purely out of curiosity, there is no guarantee that any financial profit will result from what you may learn, although it is also true that pure curiosity can lead, quite accidentally, to very valuable discoveries as well. For example, recently, scientists in Europe have confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson. One can argue that knowledge of fundamental physics has often turned out to have practical applications, yet knowledge is also sought for its own sake, out of curiosity. Scientists, fundamentally, want to understand the universe better. It cost billions of dollars to build the equipment needed to learn about the Higgs boson, yet not one cent of profit has resulted from this knowledge, so far, and quite possibly it will never have any financially profitable application. Then again, we do not really know where scientific research will take us in the future. Perhaps some day Higgs bosons will turn out to have very useful technological applications. We really cannot predict that.