Though certainly useful and methodic, I don’t think the taxonomy is complete yet.

eg. How do you catagorize the following problems?
- A (section of) society getting peeved by

1. some foreigner kissing someone on the stage

2. A half-wit commentrator wearing a tricolor on a saree

3. A half-decent almost used up cricketer cutting a cake having tri-color

but the same (section of) society is largely ignorant to –

1. A miserable state of roads on which _they_ drive everyday?

2. A few farmers committing suicide just a few 100 miles away from the “shining India”

(This is just a small list indicative of what matters and what doesn’t)
Why these problems need to be catagorized? Because most of the sixth of the humanity suffers from them.

So are these “Type -1″ problems? (And I think in your argument of gradual progression, -1 fits well. May be
‘0′?)

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Neti-neti, this is a basic tenet of Advaita and as Nisargadatta maharaj says, the nature of being can only be explained by saying what it is not. The moment you describe it as something, it ceases to be true.

Solving a problem once we know its nature – a loaded statement actually. How and when do we know that we have entirely comprehended the problem? It is always in hindsight that we realize that there is more to it than we thought especially is ‘time’ is a variable and this has huge practical implications. One example is what they call ‘NPK mentality’ in agriculture. It thought that Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium combo is enough to grow plants and damn everything else. This has given rise to myriad problems associated with commercialized agriculture that we currently face.

- Lurker

Now, tell me if I made any sense at all.

My (uninformed)view,

The composition of problems tackled by an civilization (in addition to limitation imposed by the present technology) is dependend upon two broad factors.

1. Economic Factor – In this I count amount of surplus product available.
This in turn is dependant on the productivity and the distribution of product along different classes.

For example I think that height greek and roman civilization attained was possible because of employment of slaves.

This changed after industrial revolution.

2. Cultural Factor – How much emphasis is placed upon abstract as opposed to material , alternatively one can frame this as egalatarian (vox populi vox dei) vs elitist society.

Regards

In my understanding, preoccupation with the resolution of Engg. problems (Type I) that are connected to issues of survival and propogation of our species can inhibit thinking about Type II or III issues. I can understand and accept that.

Thereafter, it gets a bit blurred. The boundary between Type II and III problems is grey. At some stage contemplation of the laws of the Universe, its start (and/ or end) get one close to pondering about metaphysical issues. As Stephen Hawking remarked something to this effect in one of his books when he said that even if one got through the puzzle of Creation and explained the laws that would govern all phenomena, we still are left with the question- why does it all bother to exist? Your poser- does the Universe exist only because there are sentinet beings in existence is close to the Vedantic belief that the name and form we give to all matter and energy in the Universe is an out put/ invention of our minds. I am putting it badly, but I suppose you get the drift.

Economic development seems to me like it is an engg. issue (of policy design, structure of social/ monetary incentives, etc.) Are there fundamental laws governing human behaviour that could explain social phenomena/ choices we make, etc., as propounded by determinism? – wish I had a definite answer.

I wish I had something more to add. Maybe we’ll get somewhere if we keep thinking about this enough.