Difficulty understanding how the word "actual" works in "...actual problems that you face."

Very good question. As a non-native speaker, I'm often caught thinking stuff like this about English and languages in general.

In that specific case, I think it can mean any of the three options provided.

The reason why, is that despite the fact we humans think we can be very objective in the ways we think and express ourselves, we actually are not.

I often think the meaning conveyed by sentences - both spoken and written - is at most approximate to the message the speaker/writer first had in their minds.

That is because they generate language through a range of cultural, psychological and contextual filters that are unavailable to the listener.

Then, once you read or listen to the content of the sentence, your mind will necessarily represent another thing entirely, based on your own filters. That's a common source of misunderstandings in language that's theoretically clear and objective, and also the reason different people interpret a single "objective" piece of information - not just spoken sentences - in wildly different ways. The reason we can still understand one another is that we use language consistently. So when you see a tree, you call the colour of their leaves "green", and so do the other people around you. But how each person thinks, understands and generate sentences using the concept of "green" is completely personal.

So, as a final answer to you question, I think the best way to think about it is to consider the SE mentality as a whole. SE is supposed to produce valuable knowledge that can be later accessed by those interested. It's a knowledge repository. That's the reason you can't delete a question that got at least one answer. With that in mind, SE has to be pragmatical, meaning, questions that will lead nowhere, or that are too abstract and hypothetical to be answered are outside its scope.

Summing it up, you can safely interpret that phrase to include and exceed the 3 possibilities you pointed out. Don't take it too much in a literal, restricting way. But the gist of it absolutely is: don't ask questions that are too hypothetical, abstract, vague and overall only intended to waste everyone's times, as if you spent an afternoon thinking a highly hypothetical question that might need a whole decade of reasearch to answer - if it is even answerable at all - and then ask it on SE.