What's Our Problem?

From the creator of the wildly popular blog Wait But Why, a fun and fascinating deep dive into what the hell is going on in our strange, unprecedented modern times. Between 2013 and 2016, Tim Urban became one of the world’s most popular bloggers, writing dozens of viral, long-form articles about everything from AI to colonizing Mars to procrastination. Then, he turned his attention to a new topic: the society around him. Why was everything such a mess? Why was everyone acting like such a baby? When did things get so tribal? Why do humans do this stuff? This massive topic sent Tim tumbling down his deepest rabbit hole yet, through mountains of history, evolutionary psychology, political theory, neuroscience, and modern-day political movements, as he tried to figure out the answer to a simple question: What’s our problem? Six years later, he emerged from the hole holding this book. What’s Our Problem? is a deep and expansive analysis of our modern times, in the classic style of Wait But Why, packed with original concepts, sticky metaphors, and 300 drawings. The book provides an entirely new framework and language for thinking and talking about today’s complex world. Instead of focusing on the usual left-center-right horizontal political axis, which is all about what we think, the book introduces a vertical axis that explores how we think, as individuals and as groups.

What Hacker News says

ProllyInfamousJan 2026

>There’s a massive disconnect between people with rules-based morality and people with outcome-based morality ... it’s important to understand how people actually think.

My most-sobering book read in 2025 was Tim Urban's What's Our Problem — it definitely helped me better understand my two lawyerbros — there is an inner gollum driving everybody, and we need to ascend towards higher thinking.

[•] <https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Our-Problem-Self-Help-Societies...>

Thanks for your perspective.

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ProllyInfamousDec 2025

>~Is dominance necessary?

Not necessarily — it's about respect. And a time-tested method is to exert your dominance (typically with violence). Maintaining power[1] is about maintaining respect [2].

[I love that certain groups of sub-ordinate apes have been observed literally tearing the alpha monkey apart, killing him; effectively ending excessive tyrannies]

As a counter-example, among the most respected persons in a prison system is the one who is generous[0] with their commisary. Snickers bars end wars.

"You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar"

>~The desire for more.

"The problem with always winning is you end up having to win all the time." —John Candy

[0] without reciprical expectations

[1] "everything is about sex, except sex; sex is about POWER" — without further commentary, other than are you reading these headlines (PS: he didn't kill himself)?!

[2] If you have not, Tim Urban's book What's Our Problem[3] is among my favorite datageek sociology books. It helped me better understand both my world and my lawyer brothers. He's the author of the excellent Wait But Why? blog.

[3] <https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Our-Problem-Self-Help-Societies...>

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huijzerJan 2025

> [...] peacefully prevent the talk from proceeding as scheduled.

I am strongly opposed to this idea. We should not be burning books and should not be preventing talks from proceeding.

See Tim Urban's book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies for why blocking speakers is a bad idea. Tim's argument essentially is that it's okay to decide you don't want to see a speaker, it's also okay to decide if you advice your friends to not see a speaker, but it's not okay to block a speaker from speaking to anyone.

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christiangencoSep 2024

I've been thinking a lot recently about where I would personally draw the line on what sorts of speech should be criminal.

If someone publicly called for specific violence (ex: "let's all meet at Joe's house to burn it down—I'll bring the lighter") that feels to me like the sort of thing that would be useful to do something about instead of waiting for the actual crime to be committed.

But publicly stating that you support a violent act that somebody else did? Criticizing widely accepted beliefs? Expressing that you don't like a particular sort of person? I don't see how we could possibly criminalize anything like that without neutering the ability for a society to come up with new ideas.

Tim Urban's "What's Our Problem" has a great framing of this question: the sort of discourse needed for a high-rung "idea lab" requires that people are about to speak publicly in ways that appear to be "spreading lies online" (one of the crimes Shanbehzadeh, the Iranian writer, was apparently charged with). Without that freedom we all descend into tribal barbarism that leaves us stuck in the current set of ideas we happen to have right now.

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christiangencoJan 2024

For two excellent books on the topic of how the woke ideology corrodes societies (academia in particular) check out "What's Our Problem?" by Tim Urban and "The Coddling of the American Mind" by by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.

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jballerJan 2024

You are not taking crazy pills. This comment perfectly tracks my thoughts upon confronting similar a couple years ago. The toughest part was that I didn’t know the words to name or describe it.

I’ll +1 someone else’s recommendation of Tim Urban’s book “What’s Our Problem” - he dove into this rabbit hole and explained what he found, and it’s super approachable.

For a deeper dive, Bill Ackman very publicly sharing his own reckoning with this realization[1] and credits Christopher Rufo’s book “America’s Cultural Revolution” for helping him make sense of it[2].

[1] https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760

[2] https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1742687058915938532

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