Some problems are best not solved on their own terms; changing the terms is available and usually unconsidered.
Alexander cut it in 333 BC rather than untying it. The move's value is that changing the terms is nearly always available and nearly never considered, because the puzzle as posed is what everyone is looking at.
In practice
- A firm facing an impossible integration deadline renegotiates the contract's scope instead of the timeline.
- A dispute over who owns a shared driveway is settled by both parties selling to a developer, which nobody had proposed.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Paradoxes that broke theories, and sayings that outlived them