What's Our Problem?Tim Urban
What's Our Problem?
by Tim Urban · first published 2023
14mentions
7recommended by
11HN commenters
2023–2026first – last mentioned
64% recommend36% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible, illustrated breakdown of political polarization and how public discourse went wrong, with humor and clear framing; suits readers wanting a grounded look at why societies struggle to disagree productively.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I'd recommend Tim Urban's (of waitbutwhy fame) new book, What's Our Problem. It's a deep dive on a lot of these things in the last decade and how we ended up where we are now.
on “Are You Ok?” ↗Have been reading "What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies" by Tim Urban? I've been loving it, and he talks about the importance of 2 counterparties identifying what _is_, before distinguishing what _should be_.
on “The James Webb Space Telescope will ripple through our moral universe” ↗What’s Our Problem by Tim Urban of https://waitbutwhy.com fame. Excellent breakdown of the problem of politics and the increasing polarization of our times. Plus loads of great illustrations and humor besides. Can’t recommend…
on “Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?” ↗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.
on “A math professor who objects to diversity statements” ↗…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…
on “A math professor who objects to diversity statements” ↗…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…
on “Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader” ↗…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…
on “No Billionares at FOSDEM” ↗…"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...>
on “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” ↗…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...>…
on “The Delete Act” ↗…against the school. As of 2022, 456 U.S. colleges⬥ have bias response teams (almost double the 2017 total of 232),49 and very few have been subject to investigations like the one at Michigan.” Excerpt From What's Our Problem? Tim Urban https://books.apple.com/se/book/whats-our-problem/id64456422... This material may be protected by copyright.
on “TikTok’s Algorithm Keeps Pushing Suicide to Vulnerable Kids” ↗According to Tim Urban’s latest book "What’s our problem?", modern Western society also has other problems such as an increase in groupthink, which is for example visible in the aggressiveness of current US politics. Overall, it’s difficult to have much hope…
on “A mental-health crisis is gripping science – toxic research culture is to blame” ↗> Welcome to late-stage capitalism. Good reads/resources about this? I started reading "What's Our Problem" [1] but find it difficult to find "non-partisan" resources nowadays. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102146148-what-s-our-pro...
on “Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley” ↗…function: role in psychiatric disorders" * view on what's wrong with society: "I believe this book will go down in history as the most important philosophical text of the early 21st century." [Tim Urban's "What's Our Problem?"] * [ironically] on intelligence, liking the quote "Being smart makes you more prone to confirmation bias" * likes John Haidt's new book "The Anxious Generation" etc
on “What we know about CEO shooting suspect” ↗I'm reading Tim Urban's book titled "What's Our Problem". It definitely explains the different types of thinking that I'm making up our current society, including social media. I haven't got to the part yet where he suggests what to do about it, but it's…
on “Study: Social media probably can't be fixed” ↗