I also found these very wise words from Sweeney (originally posted 15 November 2015) which I hold in high esteem:
quoted from Sweeney: Link: https://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=5564.msg37785#msg37785
You should be proud - you discovered this bend by yourself and the fact that someone else got there first should not diminish your achievement. There is an argument that no knot can ever be really described as "new" since knots have been around for so long who is to say that someone else isn't actually using a "new" knot somewhere in the world?
As I just stated in some other thread, musing over some
child's --undeniably unknowing-- playing leading to their
*new* knots.
We can however see *invention* as a double-edged,
Janus-faced (w/good & bad sides) thing :: i.e., that
all this invention comes at the expense of researching!
On the Net, it has long been that sometimes a questioner
is chided for not doing prior searching for extant answers
to her question ; and yet one can argue that the faster
way is to (re-)ask and get an immediate, search-time-free
response (and admittedly one can waste much time weeding
through all the returns that come from a search). Sometimes
the response is a bit of compromise :: that a wise responder
then points to the best prior research to be perused (and so
doesn't have to re-state it anew).
(-;