Understanding the nature of many types of problems

In the realm of problem-solving, not all challenges are created equal. Some issues are straightforward and easy to address, while others are complex and multifaceted, requiring careful consideration and nuanced approaches. To help you better understand the diverse nature of the problems you encounter, and tailor your approach to the specific nature of each one, we’ve come up with a list of types of problems and categorized them with evocative names.

List of types of problems

Which ones have you had to deal with?

1. Smashed Watch

Often, when a watch is smashed, there are so many broken parts that fixing just one or two doesn’t make the watch function. Similarly, a Smashed Watch problem is one where there are so many issues at once that fixing one has no benefit unless you fix others too.

2. Leaky Pipe

Fixing one problem causes the others to intensify. If you plug up one leak in a pipe that's leaking in multiple places, doing so increases the water pressure, which causes the other spots to leak more.

3. Shark Laser

A proposed solution that does not even aim to solve a relevant, let alone important problem, so it doesn’t matter how well you get it to work or how much you enhance it.

4. Oil Land

A problem that is so close to being solved that the benefits will accrue to whoever first bothers to put some effort into it.

5. Lead to Gold

A problem which is so hard that humanity isn’t even close to being smart enough or technologically advanced enough to solve it. Like alchemists trying to turn lead into gold, we toil away at it pointlessly.

6. Booby Trapped Garden

A seemingly normal garden is filled with hidden traps. These problems look easy from the outside but have hidden difficulties that cause repeated failures. This leads to lots of attempts to solve them, all of them miserable failures.

7. Feature Creep

In software development, feature creep is the tendency for a project to grow in scope, gaining more and more features that make it hard ever to complete. These are problems where the definition of the problem keeps growing, making it ever harder to solve. 

8. Sleeping Horror

The stories of H.P. Lovecraft often featured ancient, dormant monsters that can awaken and bring about immense destruction. Similarly, Sleeping Horror problems are not that likely to happen, but if they do, it will be horrible. Usually, nobody bothers to try to solve these problems because they assume it probably won’t happen, and there are always more immediately pressing concerns. Unfortunately, the horror will probably wake up eventually.

9. Mid Court Pass

A problem could be solved pretty easily, but it falls between multiple people’s responsibilities. Hence nobody takes responsibility for it, assuming someone else will do so.

10. Will-o'-the-wisp

Will-o'-the-wisps are mysterious, elusive lights that lead travelers astray. Similarly, Will-o'-the-wisp problems are ones that, despite happening from time to time,  nobody can solve because nobody understands their cause. 

11. Tug of war

In a tug of war, one team’s gain is another team’s loss. A tug of war problem is one that can’t be solved for one group without making another group substantially worse off.

12. Piñata

A minor problem or non-existent problem that is promoted as a major problem for political benefit, or so as to distract from harder to solve, bigger problems.

13. Too much salt

Adding salt to bland food makes it taste better, up to a point - but with too much salt, it becomes inedible. Similarly, this kind of problem is created by the solution used to fix another problem.

14. PlayPump

A problem created by well-intentioned people due to naivety. Its name alludes to a now-infamous case of altruism-gone-wrong, where well-meaning people tried to provide clean water to rural African communities using a unique approach: a merry-go-round that pumped water from the ground as children played.

15. Death spiral

One problem that's created by another problem which creates more problems, leading to an unsolvable cluster of problems.

16. Loose Thread

A problem that would have been very easy to solve if it were worked on early isn’t solved because it seems too minor to worry about. It keeps getting worse until it’s very costly to fix. Much like a loose thread on a sweater being ignored until it’s unraveled too much to be simply fixed.

17. Sleeping Dog

An allusion to the idiom “let sleeping dogs lie”, these are problems that only actually become problems if you try to solve them.

18. Hated Equilibrium

A situation where everyone is unhappy with the state of affairs, but no one can unilaterally fix the situation. Actually solving the problem would require coordination between the parties to act together in unison, but the parties can't figure out a way to coordinate or can't agree on how to proceed. So the problem goes unfixed.  

19. Moving the Ocean

A substantially important problem where the cost of solving it is so high that, despite its importance, it’s not even worth solving. (Thanks to Parish Mozdzierz for this suggestion.)

20. Chesterton's Fence

Something that appears to be a problem, but was actually put there on purpose as the solution to a (now hard to spot) problem, and so "solving" it might be a mistake.

Chesterton’s Fence is a useful critical thinking concept, derived from something G. K. Chesterton wrote in his 1929 book, The Thing. He writes:

[L]et us say, for the sake of simplicity, [there exists] a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

The concept of Chesterton’s Fence reminds us that it is important to understand why something has been done before we criticize or undo it. Merely not understanding the point of a thing is often not enough to warrant action against it.

21. Demonic Problem

A problem that seems like it might destroy you if you make it your job to try to solve it, and you are absolutely correct. Yet, for some reason, you are tempted to try.

22. Ship of Theseus

A problem that is not real, and only seems real because of confusion or the complexity required to think about it clearly.

This problem type gets its name from the Ship of Theseus problem, which is a classic philosophical puzzle that questions the nature of identity. It goes like this:

Theseus leaves port on a ship. Over the course of his very long journey, each part of his ship is damaged and replaced (one after the other, over a long time). When he eventually gets to his destination, does he arrive on the same ship he left on? If so, what makes it the same? If not, at what point did it become a different ship?

Some people see this problem as not actually a real puzzle, but rather, just a silly semantic game - there is no answer to when the ship is no longer the original, it just becomes a bit less like the original with each part that's lost.

On the other hand, the most popular response to this puzzle today (among academic philosophers) is a complex answer that involves thinking of objects as four-dimensional (rather than three-dimensional) things stretched out in spacetime.

23. Charybdis

In Greek mythology, Charybdis is a monster that can only be escaped by sailing close to another, still very dangerous monster (Scylla). A Charybdis problem is one where the solution is only a bit less terrible than the problem itself. 

24. Ocean of Pain

A problem so big that you can only hope to solve some tiny part of it, but that fact demotivates people from even trying to help a little bit.

25. Paper Straw

A problem that is only very slightly important but it’s cool to support so a lot of effort goes into solving it (or, at least, pretending to care about it). Eventually, some people may even forget that they are pretending.

26. Toilet Crusade

A problem that is actually deeply important, but it is so unsexy that almost nobody wants to try to tackle it.

27. Sophie’s Choice

A problem where you will feel you’ve acted unethically or experience remorse no matter which option you choose. This problem’s name comes from the novel, Sophie’s Choice, in which the main character, Sophie Zawistowska, has to choose which of her two children will live and which will be killed in a Nazi concentration camp.

28. Cursed Treasure

A problem such that whoever solves it will be punished or personally suffer severe negative consequences.

29. Living Mummy

A problem that, no matter how many times it is solved, will always emerge again.

30. Drowning Child

A problem that you become morally obligated to try to solve as soon as you encounter it or witness it clearly enough. Named after a philosophical thought experiment posited by Peter Singer in a paper that served as part of the inspiration for the Effective Altruist movement.

31. Perpetual Motion Machine

Perpetual motion machines, which are supposed to work indefinitely without an external energy source, have fascinated inventors and scientists for centuries, but they are fundamentally impossible according to the laws of physics as we understand them. As such, this type of problem is one that cannot be solved, but many people cannot recognize this or refuse to believe it. (Thanks to Maynard Handley for this suggestion.)

We hope you enjoyed this list of problem structures! We don’t think this list is exhaustive. If you can think of other types of problems and can come up with a catchy name for them, send them our way! We might even include them in the list of reader-submitted problems, below.

If you want to take your thinking about problems even further, why not try our simple tool that will help you reflect on a problem you’re experiencing and apply a framework that might help:

Launch the Resolve Harmful Situations tool

Reader-Submitted problems

32. Whack-a-Mole

Named after the fairground game, this problem involves a complex system with many hidden problems. In an attempt to solve one problem, another one pops up that was masked by the first. Solving the second problem reveals another or creates the first one again. (Submitted by Steve Wilson)

33. Sinclair

Upton Sinclair famously said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." On that note, this is a kind of problem that resists being solved because incentives are not aligned with solving it. (Submitted by Thomas Richardson.)