What are the greatest problems that we face? What are their causes?

We live in different spaces, have different experiences and our understanding of the world varies, so naturally we will not all agree on which problems are of paramount importance. Many of these may have an underlying cause, indicating that the greater issue is its root cause or something else.

I have searched on this question and found several organisations with interesting lists. The World Economic Forum has a list of the top ten risks that we face in 2024. Development Aid has a list of their own. Time had a more US centric list for 2024. The United Nations has a list of global issues they aspire to work on. 8,000 hours have their list of problems which they prioritise because they are unusually large in scale, unduly neglected, and solvable. In order to cover the greatest problems we face, I will examine those featured in these lists.

We can trace the cause of some problems ultimately to us (anobis), while others are independent of us (abalia). It is more likely that those that can be traced to us should to some extent be solvable, since we are the cause. In fact all the of the anobis listed on 8,000 hours website fit that category. Some abalia that are totally independent of us may not have a solution and others may.

This theme will most likely also involve quite a bit about human behaviour, which may also come under the Who? theme.

Aside from what problems we face, this theme explores how we understand these problems, and why at times we fail to solve them. Ideas on how we may solve them should be in the How? theme.