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Comment by cobbal

6 hours ago

This is definitely true in an information theory sense: having more knowledge is always better than less knowledge. However, it may not be true in math as a social human endeavor, and having answers without interesting paths to get there may not expand human mathematics in the same way.

If Fermat had a book with larger margins, would Weil have devoted so much time to proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture? No one can say.