I beg to differ on this. It is the existence of the knot that determines if there is a “problem” in the first place, before we can evaluate this knot as a probable solution of this problem. If we do not know the knot, we do not even know that we have a “problem”, and that this problem can be solved with a “knot”, in general, and with this knot, in particular. Knots are rope-made mechanisms, that can be evaluated as such, without any reference to “the problem”.
We see a heavy rock sitting on the path to the village with the pretty young women next to ours. What we will do ? We will treat it as it is, as a small mountain that was placed there at the time of the incubation of the cosmic egg. We will not consider it as a “problem”, we will just try to draw our path around it, if possible. Then, somebody that has not been married yet with any of those women, in his Eureka moment, discovers the block and tackle simple machine. So, now he has the knot, the tool. Instantly, he sees the rock as a “problem” that can be solved, by the implementation of his machine. He can now pull the rock, and open the path to the abandonment of his celebrity. He has the tool, he starts to see a given by nature situation as a “problem”, he tries to solve this problem with the tool he already has. We already had the wings or the rockets, and because it had happened we had them, we could see the trip to the moon as a “problem” that could be solved with the proper use of those “tools”.
A knot can be evaluated without any reference to a problem. It can be good or bad, stable or not, secure or not, jamming or not, strong or not, per se. There are well defined and measurable quantities in a practical knot that can be evaluated by theoretical or experimental examinations, independently of a particular problem. We have first to tie all the possible simple knots, then to evaluate them as knots, and only at the very end we can start thinking if a particular knot we already know can be used to tie the hands and feet of the husbands of those women around trees.
The issue of the speed with which a knot can be tied and/or untied by the knot tyer, is directly related to the number of the required tucks of the working end in order we tie and/or untie it. As such, it is included in the general characteristics of “simplicity” mentioned in (1). So, the following comment on the mentioned post should be judged as premature, to say the least :