Terence Tao recently mused that the supply of good, fruitful open problems in mathematics is being depleted, akin to a non-renewable resource. He acknowledges this seems paradoxical given the infinite number of possible questions. To illustrate, he compares it to a region facing a drinking water shortage despite being surrounded by an ocean.

While generating arbitrary open problems, like computing the 10^10^10th digit of pi, is easy, most lack value. Such problems rarely lead to new insights or connections, and they are either too trivial or too far beyond current techniques to be instructive. Tao's reflection highlights the qualitative difference between mere unsolved questions and those that meaningfully advance the field. (1/4).